The LHC Has Discovered Its First New Particle
Big Smash: Atlas's eight giant superconducting magnets, together powerful enough to crush a bus CERNAnd no, it's not the Higgs boson Though researchers think the Higgs boson is running out of places to hide, the LHC has yet to provide conclusive proof of its existence. But the ATLAS experiment at the LHC--one of the two main experiments taking precise measurements of particle collisions--has found what is thought to be the first observation of a new particle at the world's largest science experiment. Known as cb(3P)--or Chi-b (3P)--observations of the particle should yield new insights into the strong force that holds atomic nuclei together. The cb(3P) particle is a newly observed means of combing what's known as a beauty quark with its antiquark equivalent. It's considered a boson like the Higgs, and like the Higgs it has long been thought to be there, theoretically speaking. It's a more excited state of Chi...