Large Hadron Collider finds long-sought signs of rare particle decays
Smashing protons together in search of strange particles, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva say they’ve discovered signs of particle decays that have long been predicted, but have never before been seen.
The decay pattern of the two B mesons, described in the journal Nature, could help researchers test the limits of the standard model of particle physics and probe unexplained cosmic phenomena, including the existence of dark matter and the dearth of antimatter in the universe.
Three years after the dramatic discovery of the Higgs boson -- a find that earned the theorists who predicted its existence a Nobel Prize -- CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has been retrofitted and upgraded to search for particles at even higher energies than before.
“From the scientific standpoint, this is big, heady stuff. All the puzzles of physics could fall into place or they could just remain mysteries based on what we learn from these decays,” said study co-author Joel Butler, a member of the collider’s Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment and an experimental particle physicist at Fermilab in Illinois. “This is kind of a fantastic time in physics, where many mysteries might get resolved.”
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http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-large-hadron-collider-rare-particle-decays-meson-muon-20150513-story.html
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