Scientists using Europe’s Large Hadron Collider atom-smashing machine have stumbled on the existence of an exotic particle known as the pentaquark, a discovery that could shed light on how everyday matter is constituted.
Physicists have been seeking the pentaquark for five decades, a search marked by several dramatic claims of discovery that all turned out to be false. But scientists at the LHC say they have now established the existence of the particle with an extremely high level of certainty.
“We have made very detailed checks to verify that there can be no other explanation,” said Guy Wilkinson, a physicist at Oxford University and spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, which runs the collider.
More than half a century ago, American physicist Murray Gell-Mann showed that every proton and neutron is made from combinations of three elementary particles known as quarks, research that won him the Nobel Prize. At the same time, he proposed that it should theoretically be possible to make matter from five quarks as well.
Interesting.