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LHCb announces a charming new particle
- ddavis 9y agoVery cool! LHCb continues to put out some really awesome results. Here's to hoping for some more exciting results from the rest of the LHC programme in 2017 and 2018.
- b34r 9y agoDid they not name it?
- mmusson 9y agoΞ++ cc or double charmed Xi.
- _asummers 9y agoThat's neat. I see the Xi. Does the ++ mean double, and the cc mean charmed? Having trouble parsing that, even with the sub and superscripts from the article. I guess more concretely, would a triple charmed (if that means anything) be +++ cc or ++ ccc?
- jwfxpr 9y agoThere are constraints on how quarks combine, according to the standard model, which mean (among other things) that you won't get three of the same quark combining to form a particle. The cc subscript indicates the presences of two charm quarks, and the ++ indicates the particle has an electric charge Q=+2. The subscript values show the presence of heavy quarks: charm (c), bottom (b) or top (t) quarks are heavy. The superscript is electric charge (Q), a value between -1 and +2 (-, 0, +, or ++).
- dukwon 9y ago++ means a charge of +2, cc means two charm quarks (doubly-charmed) A triply-charmed baryon would be the Ωccc++
- tux3 9y agoI believe it's called the double charmed Xi baryon, but I'm not sure if it has a pet name. There's a whole bestiary of particles like this one that don't really stick out as particularly interesting, I imagine it's simpler to stick to the boring descriptive names.
- nategri 9y agocomposite particle... yawn
- deepsun 9y agoMmm, what do you exactly mean by composite? Most of well-known particles are composite of quarks (proton, neutron etc), so it's an exciting discovery indeed. It would be yawn if if it was a composite of another particles, like Cooper pairs.
- nategri 9y ago>"Most of well-known particles are composite of quarks" And that's why they're boring. At this point, bring me hints of supersymmetry or bring me pillows.
- maxharris 9y agoAt this point, bring me hints of supersymmetry or bring me pillows. What's the difference between sleeping forever and being dead? The history of science is rife with examples of people waiting for ages for evidence of their incorrect pet theories...
- Filligree 9y ago> What's the difference between sleeping forever and being dead? That is not dead which can eternal lie. Charming particles may be sleep-inducing, but there's always a chance of a strange new one over the aeons.
- dukwon 9y agoGood thing science isn't done for your entertainment. What's the point of your comments other than to imply that physicists somehow aren't doing a good enough job?
- nategri 9y ago
- breakingcups 9y agoWhat surprised me most is that CERN shelled out for a TLD? Those things don't come cheap.
- k_lander 9y agomaybe they were offered a discount for inventing the web