Sadly, it’s not the Holy Grail that is the Higgs boson, but it’s a new particle that was predicted by the Standard Model but never actually observed.
It is called Chi_b (3P) and will help scientists understand better the forces that hold matter together.
The as-yet unpublished discovery is reported on the Arxiv pre-print server.
The Chi_b (3P) is a more excited state of Chi particles already seen in previous collision experiments, explained Prof Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the LHC.
“The new particle is made up of a ‘beauty quark’ and a ‘beauty anti-quark’, which are then bound together,” he told BBC News.
“People have thought this more excited state should exist for years but nobody has managed to see it until now.
“It’s also interesting for what it tells us about the forces that hold the quark and the anti-quark together – the strong nuclear force. And that’s the same force that holds, for instance, the atomic nucleus together with its protons and the neutrons.”
I hear “beauty quark” and think of Armin Shimerman.
Admit it. You think so too.