'X particle' from the dawn of time detected inside the Large Hadron Collider

[Judi Lynn]

By Ben Turner published about 7 hours ago

The mysterious particle will reveal insights into the earliest moments of the universe.



The particle was produced inside the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Physicists at the world's largest atom smasher have detected a mysterious, primordial particle from the dawn of time.

About 100 of the short-lived "X" particles — so named because of their unknown structures — were spotted for the first time amid trillions of other particles inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator, located near Geneva at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

These X particles, which likely existed in the tiniest fractions of a second after the Big Bang, were detected inside a roiling broth of elementary particles called a quark-gluon plasma, formed in the LHC by smashing together lead ions. By studying the primordial X particles in more detail, scientists hope to build the most accurate picture yet of the origins of the universe. They published their findings Jan. 19 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"This is just the start of the story," lead author Yen-Jie Lee, a member of CERN's CMS collaboration and an experimental particle physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in a statement. "We've shown we can find a signal. In the next few years, we want to use the quark-gluon plasma to probe the X particle's internal structure, which could change our view of what kind of material the universe should produce."

More:
https://www.livescience.com/x-particle-spotted-inside-lhc