Some physicists will get an idea for a new particle or decay mode. Then they will postulate various decay modes that could be captured by the detectors. The sho

Some physicists will get an idea for a new particle or decay mode. Then they will postulate various decay modes that could be captured by the detectors. The short-lived new particle arent directly detectable, but daughter particles may be. Particles leave characteristic signatures on the two large CERN detectors, each which consists of an onion of thousands of directional and intensity sensors. Then they computer search quadrillions of already recorded events at the detectors for a significant number of candidate events. This may take months for a postdoc or grad student to do. I recall the Higgs had about 80-some possible decay modes. Only a handful of them could be measured above background noise. A couple of teams pursued two classes of them and found results.