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Fermilab Discovers Untheorized Particle

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the surprise-particles dept.

alevy writes to mention that scientists at Fermilab have detected a new, completely untheorized particle. Seems like Fermi has been a hotbed of activity lately with the discovery of a new single top quark and narrowing the gap twice on the Higgs Boson particle. "The Y(4140) particle is the newest member of a family of particles of similar unusual characteristics observed in the last several years by experimenters at Fermilab's Tevatron as well as at KEK and the SLAC lab, which operates at Stanford through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. 'We congratulate CDF on the first evidence for a new unexpected Y state that decays to J/psi and phi,' said Japanese physicist Masanori Yamauchi, a KEK spokesperson. 'This state may be related to the Y(3940) state discovered by Belle and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks. We will try to confirm this state in our own Belle data.'"

5 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. What does this say about the search for the Higgs? by The_mad_linguist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does the creation of a previously unanticipated particle imply issues with current theory significant enough to make the LHC experiment less useful? Even if we find the Higgs, the current model will still be insufficient.

  2. new particles? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    or it may be an error, like this other newly discovered untheorized particle may be:
    http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/03/looking-for-exotic-matter.ars

  3. Re:Naming things, publicity, and financing by niklask · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or maybe not. There are way to many mesons and baryons (hadrons) out there to give them all individual names. The name Y(4140) follows a well established scheme. Y(x) are all upsilon mesons (b-bbar) and x stands for the mass of the given resonance.

  4. The most exciting words in science by Nimey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As Isaac Asimov wrote, the most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I've found it!), but "That's funny...".

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  5. Re:Authorized by mybecq · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm having a problem observing you. You appear to be a bovine particle.