Two new particles have been discovered thanks to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), as announced on Wednesday (19/11) by Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland.
The existence of these particles, called Xi_b' and Xi_b*, was predicted by theory, but until now they had never been observed by scientists. These particles are baryons, which means they belong to the family of subatomic particles, the most famous members of which are protons and neutrons.
Baryons are made up of three quarks, the elementary particles that are bound together by the so-called "strong force.".
The existence of the new particles was confirmed thanks to experiments carried out in 2011 and 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider. The research was mainly conducted by Matthew Charles of the Laboratory of Nuclear Physics (CNRS/UPMC/Université Paris Diderot) in collaboration with an American scientist.
In its announcement, the CNRS (France's National Center for Scientific Research) notes that measuring the properties of the two new particles "contributes to a better understanding of the theory of the strong interaction within the framework of the standard model of particle physics," while the "strong interactions" are responsible for the coherence of nuclear material.
It is noted that a similar particle of the same family, Xi_b*0, was observed in 2012, thanks to the LHC, which is expected to be operational again in the spring of 2015.
