Physicists detect whiff of new particle at the Large Hadron Collider

For decades, particle physicists have yearned for physics beyond their tried-and-true standard model. Now, they are finding signs of something unexpected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest atom smasher at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The hints come not from the LHC’s two large detectors, which have yielded no new particles since they bagged the last missing piece of the standard model, the Higgs boson, in 2012, but from a smaller detector, called LHCb, that precisely measures the decays of familiar particles.

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readed that

The latest signal involves deviations in the decays of particles called B mesons.

Yes, B mesons like kaons demonstrate the lack of symmetry between matter and antimatter in their decays, which is why a large number of accelerators have been built to specifically study the decay of B mesons.

> LHCb physicists find that when one type of B meson decays into a K meson, its byproducts are skewed: The decay produces a muon (a cousin of the electron) and an antimuon less often than it makes an electron and a positron.

That’s a different sort of asymmetry. I hadn’t heard of that before. I don’t immediately see why anyone would expect muons to be produced as often as electrons. Generally smaller (electrons) is easier to produce.

> Within the standard model, a B meson decays to a K meson only through a complicated “loop” process in which the bottom quark briefly turns into a top quark before becoming a strange quark. The new data suggest the bottom quark might morph directly into a strange quark, which is forbidden in the standard model.

I didn’t expect that. Top quarks are notoriously difficult to produce. So this extension of the standard model ought to be relatively easy to observe.

> Physicists with ATLAS and CMS 18 months ago reported hints of a hugely massive new particle only to see them fade away with more data. The current signs are about as strong as those were.

Do you remember seeing that announcement 18 months ago? I don’t.

Would all particles created in particle accelerators be created naturally or are some of the conditions needed no longer existing

Cymek said:

Would all particles created in particle accelerators be created naturally or are some of the conditions needed no longer existing

I suspect a lot of sub particles are created in stars.