LHCb

2 Articles

Something’s Up In Switzerland: Explaining The B Meson News From The Large Hadron Collider

May 13, 2021 by 50 Comments

Particle physics is a field of extremes. Scales always have 10really big number associated. Some results from the Large Hadron Collider Beauty (LHCb) experiment have recently been reported that are statistically significant, and they may have profound implications for the Standard Model, but it might also just be a numbers anomaly, and we won’t get to find out for a while. Let’s dive into the basics of quantum particles, in case your elementary school education is a little rusty.

It all starts when one particle loves another particle very much and they are attracted to each other, but then things move too fast, and all of a sudden they’re going in circles in opposite directions, and then they break up catastrophically…

Continue reading “Something’s Up In Switzerland: Explaining The B Meson News From The Large Hadron Collider” →

A Tetraquark For Muster Mark!

August 13, 2020 by 19 Comments

The holy grail of every particle physics experiment is the discovery of a new particle. Finding a new constituent of matter may earn you eternal glory within the history of physics. Unfortunately, since the last missing piece of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson, was discovered in 2012, and with still no clue about the nature of dark matter and dark energy, there is not much hope to stumble upon a new fundamental building block of matter any time soon.

Luckily, this is not true for composite particles, especially the strange world of quark matter still yields some potential for new discoveries. The latest of such was the observation of a new tetraquark by the LHCb experiment. But what the hell is a quark anyway and why is it named after a German dairy product? Continue reading “A Tetraquark For Muster Mark!” →