Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have made an exciting new observation of an elusive subatomic particle which could reveal important information about a rare type of particle.
Discovering a new particle at the LHC typically involves a lot of particle smashing using the facility's giant particle accelerator and studying the results with an array of sensitive instruments. That's how the LHC discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, and how they discovered a number of new particles over the past few years. Last year, the LHC got an upgrade that made it even more powerful, and now we're seeing the results.
The newest announcement from the LHC is the detection of a particle called a charmed omega baryon. The charmed omega baryon is an elusive particle that's difficult to measure, although a handful of other experiments have been able to spot it in the past. However, these previous measurements have been unable to determine much about the particle except that it exists.
This new measurement from the LHC changes that. The LHC team spotted five different versions of the particle corresponding to five different excited states. Discovering five versions of a particle all at once is completely unprecedented and could reveal a lot about omega baryons and the nature of quarks.
Quarks are tiny particles that are the building blocks of larger particles like protons, neutrons, and omega baryons, collectively called hadrons. There are six different types of quark—up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom—and most hadrons are made up of different combinations of two or three of them. Protons, for instance, are made up of two up quarks and one down quark, while charmed omega baryons are made of one charm and two stranges.
Quarks are incredibly tiny and difficult to study, and only very recently have scientists discovered cases of particles made of four or five quarks. Having such clear data on charmed omega baryons could help scientists learn even more about quarks and the particles they comprise.