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Pentaquarks

Posted by timothy on from the cheesy-bits dept.

jafuser writes "Physicists are quite confident that they have discovered a new baryonic state called a 'pentaquark' which is a particle composed of *five* quarks (4 quarks and one anti-quark to be precise). Up until now, quarks were only observed to come together in groups of two (mesons) or three (baryons). If you still haven't gotten comfortable with knowing your leptons from your hadrons, I suggest clicking through an excellent site at Particle Adventure."

3 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Easy mistake by seinman · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    For a minute there, I thought it said hardon. Gotta stop surfing for porn between viewings of slashdot.

  2. From the Article.. by mess31173 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The new data show strong evidence for a five-quark baryon state at a mass of 1.54 GeV, with a narrow width of 22 MeV (FWHM). The experiment, carried out with the CLAS magnetic spectrometer in Hall B at Jefferson Lab, employed a multi-GeV beam of photons and a deuterium target. The reaction produced a K- meson and a proton in the final state, along with the five-quark object, which then decayed into a neutron and a K+ meson. One possible diagram is shown below. The valence quark configuration of the exotic state contains two up quarks, two down quarks, and an anti-strange quark.

    (Me)

    BRAIN... HURT... MUST... HAVE... BEER....

    AHHHHH!

  3. So what's a ... by Muad'Dave · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    dectector? Look at the image on the first linked page.

    --
    Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.