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New Particle Throws Monkeywrench in Particle Physics
- carterschonwald 18y agodoes anyone here have a background that could tell us if this is legit or just a snazzy interpretation to noisy data?
- quantumhobbit 18y agoIt looks more like an interesting result with an overblown headline. In the linked article they refer to the Y(4140) as a composite of quarks, possibly charm and anti-charm quarks. Charm and anti-charm quarks are nothing new, but this is a new composite particle made out of them. Unlike normal mesons, which are a quark and its anti-quark, this is likely composed of more than just a pair of quarks; four or more. If I had to guess I would say that it is extremely unstable and therefore short-lived. If it's true, this story wouldn't lead to a rewrite of the Standard Model of particle physics but could offer some insight into the strong force works. As for my background, I have only spent one year as an undergrad in particle physics and that was in neutrinos and not high-energy stuff like in the article. So I'm sure someone else here will be better prepared to do a deeper analysis of the data.