Mysterious Subatomic Particle May Represent Exotic New Form of Matter

[n2doc]

BY ADAM MANN
06.17.13

In the course of exploring the properties of a strange subatomic particle, physicists may have stumbled upon something even stranger: a mysterious and exotic new form of matter.

The intriguing discovery was made more or less simultaneously by two collaborations: the Belle experiment at the Japanese High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) and BESIII experiment run by the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in China.

Both teams were looking at a particle called Y(4260) that had been discovered in 2005 but whose nature has mystified researchers since. By smashing together electrons and their antiparticle, positrons, the experiments produced large numbers of Y(4260), which lives for only 10-23 seconds before falling apart into other particles. The teams noticed that their data had a peculiar bump around 3.9 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), an energy corresponding to roughly four times the weight of a proton.

“Inspired by this discovery, we decided to further study the Y(4260) decay, which indeed did not disappoint us,” said particle physicist Zhiqing Liu, lead author of a paper from the Belle experiment that appeared in Physical Review Letters on June 17. A second paper from BESIII, of which Liu is also a member, appears in the same issue.

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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/four-quark-particle/

[Ian David]

1. Finally, a source of Wonderflonium for my freeze ray! n/t

[longship]

2. A wimpy freeze ray? Bah!

It's no good unless it can destroy the universe. Haven't you learned anything from SciFi flicks in the last couple of decades?

And Hollywood absolutely must cast Steve Buscemi, if only he can say the line, "Guess what guys! It's time to embrace the horror."

Nobody would see it on the big screen. This one absolutely has to go directly to video rental like most of what Hollywood produces these days, especially in the so-called horror and SciFi genres.

[xocet]

3. Thanks for posting that news. It is quite interesting. Here is a related article....

Interactions NewsWire #18-13
26 March 2013 http://www.interactions.org
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Source: Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Content: Press Release
Date Issued: 26 March 2013
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Observation of a charged charmoniumlike structure at BESIII

An international team of scientists that operate the BESIII Experiment at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider in China recently began a series of specialized studies aiming at an understanding of the anomalous "Y(4260)" particle. As a striking and unexpected first observation from these new studies, the collaboration has reported that the Y(4260) particle in fact decays to a new, and perhaps even more mysterious, particle that they named the "Zc(3900)."

Since its 2005 discovery by the BaBar experiment at the SLAC National Laboratory in Stanford California, the Y(4260) particle has continued to mystify researchers. While other particles that share certain similarities to the Y(4260) have long been successfully explained as examples of a charmed quark and anti-charmed quark paired together by the strong force of particle physics, attempts to incorporate the Y(4260) into this model have failed, and its underlying nature remains unknown.

In late December of 2012, the BESIII team embarked on a program of research to produce large numbers of Y(4260) particles by annihilating electrons and anti-electrons (positrons) with a total energy that corresponds to the mass of the Y(4260). Once produced, the Y(4260) quickly decays, and its decay products are measured with the BESIII particle detector. According to Prof. Xiaoyan Shen, the spokesperson of the BESIII experiment, from the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, "the goal of our program is to understand the various processes by which the Y(4260) decays with the hope that this will provide clues about its internal structure, and thereby yield new insights into the workings of the strong force, which is responsible for holding quarks together inside subatomic particles."

While commonly known subatomic particles, such as the proton and the neutron, are comprised of the relatively lightweight up- and down- quarks, the BESIII Experiment is specialized for the study of matter that contains the heavier charmed quarks. The J/psi particle, for example, which is known to be composed of a charmed quark and an anti-charmed quark bound together by the strong force, can be copiously produced at the collider in Beijing. "To date, BESIII has directly produced more than a billion J/psi particles in these electron-positron annihilations," according to Prof. Fred Harris from the University of Hawaii, the co-spokesperson of the BESIII experiment. The J/psi particle forms the cornerstone of what has been thought to be a well understood system of various possible configurations of charmed and anti-charmed quarks, called the "charmonium" mesons, that are the simplest and considered to be among the most easily understood subatomic particles. But the recent discoveries of several new particles, including the Y(4260) and now the Zc(3900), have cast doubt on these optimistic assessments and suggest that more complex structures have to be considered.

...

http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1032697

[dipsydoodle]

4. At 22 seconds the particle said

if only I'd known 20 seconds ago what I know now.