Scientists found the elusive “God particle” or Higgs Boson with the help of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ten years ago. On July 5, the LHC was turned on for the third time, which led to the discovery of three “exotic particles.” Scientists found a “pentaquark” and the first pair of “tetraquarks” using the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva.
The LHC was turned back on after three years in April. On July 5, it was given a level of energy that had never been seen before. Since then, protons have been smashing together at almost the speed of light, which could lead to “new” physics that goes beyond the Standard Model.
About LHC
CERN, which stands for the European Council for Nuclear Research, describes the Large Hadron Collider as a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of structures that speed up the particles along the way. It took about 10 years to build the LHC, which is said to have cost about $4.75 billion in total.
The program is paid for by the countries that are part of CERN. Germany, the UK, Italy, France, and Spain pay just over 70% of the annual budget. The governments of the United States, India, and Russia, as well as universities and other large organizations, have also given money.
What was discovered?
Scientists at CERN turned on the LHC in July after upgrading and fixing it for more than three years. On July 5, they found “a new type of “pentaquark” and the first pair of “tetraquarks,” which included a new type of “tetraquark.” Quarks are the most basic parts of matter. Most of the time, they are inside protons and neutrons, which are the particles at the centre of every atom in the universe.
Most protons and neutrons are made up of two different kinds of quarks. We call these “up” and “down” quarks. The charm and top quarks are the heavier copies of the up quark, and the strange and bottom quarks are the copies of the down quark. Most hadrons, like the protons and neutrons in an atom’s nucleus, are made up of two or three quarks that come together in pairs or threes. But they can also join together to make particles with four or five quarks. These are called tetraquarks and pentaquarks.
Newest Discoveries
The new things found by the LHC are a pentagon with a charm quark, a charm antiquark with an up quark and a down quark, and the strange quark. It is the first one to have a strange quark. Scientists at CERN say that this is very important because it is statistically significant by 15 standard deviations, which is more than the five standard deviations needed to claim an observation in particle physics.
A CERN press release says that the second type is a tetraquark with two electric charges. It is made up of a charm quark, a strange antiquark, an up quark, and a down antiquark. It is an open-charm tetraquark. One of the two new tetraquarks is made up of a charm quark, a strange antiquark, an up quark, and a down antiquark (left), and the other is made up of a charm quark, a strange antiquark, an up antiquark, and a down quark.
