Potential New Particle Shows Up at the LHC, Thrilling and Confounding Physicists

[OrbitalDawn]

The gigantic accelerator in Europe has produced hints of an exotic particle that defies the known laws of physics

A little wiggle on a graph, representing just a handful of particles, has set the world of physics abuzz. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, the largest particle accelerator on Earth, reported yesterday that their machine might have produced a brand new particle not included in the established laws of particle physics known as the Standard Model.

Their results, based on the data collected from April to November after the LHC began colliding protons at nearly twice the energy of its previous runs, are too inconclusive to be sure—many physicists warned that the wiggle could just as easily represent a statistical fluke. Nevertheless, the finding has already spawned at least 10 new papers in less than a day proposing a theoretical explanation for the particle, and has the halls and blackboards of physics departments around the world churning.

 

[Drifter]

Alien residue.

 

[rwenzori]

Fascinating. I wonder what the outcome will be theory-wise.

The Des van Rooyen boson - here today, gone tomorrow?

 

[HavocXphere]

Fascinating. I wonder what the outcome will be theory-wise.

The Des van Rooyen boson - here today, gone tomorrow?

Haha clever

 

[ShaunSA]

The devil particle

 

[themba990]

If splitting atoms releases so much energy... How is smashing sub-atomic particles together just to see what might be inside a good idea. ELI5

 

[Xarog]

If splitting atoms releases so much energy... How is smashing sub-atomic particles together just to see what might be inside a good idea. ELI5

Well, for a start, splitting an atom doesn't always release energy. It takes more energy to split an iron atom than you get as a result of the splitting itself. It's only the really heavy atoms such as Uranium that create an essentially exothermic reaction.

What they do in these colliders is throw really small particles, such as protons against each other. But these interactions don't result in exothermic reactions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh-My-God_particle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-energy_cosmic_ray

There's nothing particularly dangerous about what they're doing.