Rare quadruplet 'top quarks' created at world's largest atom smasher

[Judi Lynn]

By Diane Lincoln - Live Science Contributor a day ago

Birth of these chubby-but-tiny particles could be a sign of new physics.



Close-up illustration of subatomic particle.
(Image: © Shutterstock)

The world's largest atom smasher has "given birth" to a set of four ultraheavy particles — called top quarks.

The formation of these chubby-but-tiny quadruplets, at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, has long been predicted by the Standard Model, the prevailing physics theory that governs subatomic interactions. But new physics theories suggest they could be created much more often than the Standard Model predicts. Finding more of such foursomes is the first step in testing those theories. The new findings were announced at the LHCP 2020 Conference.

Top quarks are the heaviest known fundamental subatomic particles, according to a study published in 2019 in the journal Physical Review D. Each top quark is roughly as massive as an atom of tungsten. Yet each top quark is much smaller than a proton, meaning that not only do top quarks hold the record for heaviest particle, they also are the densest form of mass known.

While top quarks were created in great abundance during the earliest moments after the Big Bang, they have a very short lifetime, vanishing completely in about a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. Nowadays, the only place top quarks can be produced and observed is in large particle accelerators.

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[Buckeye_Democrat]

1. The Standard Model doesn't seem "elegant" to me...

... but at the end of the day, we have to accept the experimental results. And keep testing.

[Igel]

3. It has all the elegance of a lame elephant

trying to juggle knives while hula dancing during a 7.5 quake.

Stipulations and kluges abound, which is one reason the LHC even exists.


Too many entirely stubborn facts are out there, though, to build a pretty theory.

[bobbieinok]

2. Thanks for posting. Am sharing