Pages

Friday, April 27, 2012

Baryons - New Discovery





CERN has recently "discovered" a new particle within the Baryon family. A Baryon is a particle that is composed of 3 Quarks. 

 Quarks are usually composed of about 6 particles each having different charges and masses -which are described as 'light' and 'heavy.' The new particle called "Xi_b^*" has 1 light Quark and 2 heavy Quarks.




Unfortunately as with most particles observed in a collider, they decay too quickly and therefore cannot be detected directly. Data about the existence of this particle was pieced together from the decay of the actual particle.   So in a sense, this is all based on speculation.

Nevertheless, this discovery helps shed more light on what keeps matter together.
We live in this world, use our bodies and objects in different ways often taking for granted the complexity of them all. To date we still do not know what gives mass to everything and what keeps everything together.




Source:






No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for reading and for your comment. All comments are subject to approval. They must be free of vulgarity, ad hominem and must be relevant to the blog posting subject matter.