The world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, recently began a new run of experiments after its latest set of upgrades, colliding particles at energy levels of 13 tera-electron-Volts (TeV). This is more than 1.5 times the 8 TeV of energy it took to discover the Higgs-boson particle in 2012, which was the last particle to be predicted by the standard model of particle physics. Scientists still remain unsatisfied with the many questions left unanswered by the mainstream theory, and hope to answer these questions by finding energy levels where the standard model that is thought to control our everyday life does not apply.
Just this month, the research team of over 1,100 members from sixteen countries announced that they had observed a new particle, which has since been named the pentaquark. Scientists believe that this new discovery may explain what holds together other subatomic particles like protons and neutrons; excited researches submitted their theories about the properties of the barely discovered particle for peer review at popular scientific discussion forums within thirty hours of the announcement.
The pentaquark is not expected to revolutionize our understanding of the universe; subatomic physicists have actually predicted its existence for the past decade based of hints in their data readings. It is, however, the first time that sufficient data has been collected in a related set of experiments for the particle’s signature peak to be statistically significant. At the 50th Moriond Elecroweak Conference earlier this year, LHC physicists announced that they did believe they had discovered a new particle, but they did not have enough statistically significant events to announce a conclusion.
The team has been developing computer models for the past few months to make sure the signals measured are not caused by any previously accounted for particles. As the name suggests, scientists believe that the pentaquark is formed out of a combination of any five individual quarks (out of six known kinds of quarks) and have identified two particular combinations in this experiment. Quarks, however, do not behave like the ordinary subatomic particles taught in a general science curriculum, and most scientific explanations about the behaviour of the new particle are wishy-washy and vague; the issue is that there are too many variables to account for, and even modern supercomputers struggle to sieve through the veritable flood of noise to glean meaningful information. Physicists have already given the study of the mechanisms behind quarks and pentaquarks a fancy name: Quantum Chromodynamics. Abbreviated as QCD, it is the sum mathematical knowledge of the scientific community on the nature of these most minute yet fundamental of particles, yet can only predict quark related behaviour to an optimal accuracy of 80%. One can be cautiously optimistic about that number rising as CERN continues to mash protons at velocities near the speed of light and study the aftermath. We may be closer now to finally understanding the nature of the universe at a fundamental level than we have ever been at any other point in history.
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