The massive amount of data collected from running the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is still being analyzed and new discoveries will be made for years just from the billions of old data records. Analysis of the 2012 data which resulted in the proof of the Higgs Boson has shown two new particles in the Proton Neutron family but built with “strange” quarks.
CERN has just made LHC data available under public license and the Higgs Zooniverse Project seeks citizen scientists to help classify explosions online.
The new baryons are called Xi_b’- and Xi_b and help confirm the Standard Model of particle physics.
Baryons such as protons and neutrons are built up of three smaller particles called quarks which come in up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top versions. The labels have no physical relevance.
One down quark, one bottom quark, and one strange quark make up each of the two new particles.
A strange and interesting (if you are a particle physicist or science groupie) thing about these quarks is that they have partial charges, -1/3 each, so the three together give the new particles a -1 charge.
Each new particle discovered provides more information about The Standard Model as scientists try to find some boundary where it no longer works.
The reason people are trying to break The Standard Model is simple, it doesn’t account for gravity, dark energy, or dark matter, all of which obviously exist.
Finding where the theory breaks down can help scientists find what needs to be changed and how it may be possible to account for gravity and the dark twins which make up about 93% of the entire universe. A not insignificant percentage.
For more information see: standard model information on the CERN website.
CERN has just made LHC data available to the public which may lead to even more discoveries.
