New Type of Particle May Have Been Found

An anonymous reader writes "The LHC is out of commission, but the Tevatron collider at Fermilab is still chugging along, and may have just discovered a new type of particle that would signal new physics. New Scientist reports that the Tevatron's CDF detector has found muons that seem to have been created outside of the beam pipe that confines the protons and anti-protons being smashed together. The standard model can't explain the muons, and some speculate that 'an unknown particle with a lifetime of about 20 picoseconds was produced in the collision, traveled about 1 centimeter, through the side of the beam pipe, and then decayed into muons.' The hypothetical particle even seems to have the right mass to account for one theory of dark matter."

Comments

Re:coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in electrical engineering, and unfortunately very few people play with scopes and irons anymore. "Hardware" engineering is mostly abstract concept juggling on computers these days.

I'm the guy with the 45 year old tube scope with Nixie tube digital readout and the two soldering irons...

1 cm in 20 pico secs..? not so fast..?!

[v4vijayakumar]

an unknown particle with a lifetime of about 20 picoseconds was produced in the collision, traveled about 1 centimeter

That is 16000 times faster than light..!

The X(3872) Particle

[Rocketship Underpant]

There are several mysterious particles that aren't easily identified by the Standard Model. One in particular is the X(3872) particle, which was discovered by Japanese scientists and confirmed by other laboratories. It might be a tetraquark particle or even a meson molecule, but scientists are just guessing for now.

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2008/04/13/the-charming-case-of-x3872/