up, up, down, down, charm, strange, charm, strange, top, bottom, start

July 5, 2022 9:30 AM

CERN has announced that "the international LHCb collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has observed three never-before-seen particles."

"... a new kind of "pentaquark" and the first-ever pair of "tetraquarks", which includes a new type of tetraquark. The findings, presented today at a CERN seminar, add three new exotic members to the growing list of new hadrons found at the LHC."

posted by mhoye (33 comments total)

Three, you say?

sideways, sex appeal and peppermint.

(Yes, I realize they didn't discover three new types of quarks but rather three new groupings of quarks)
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:34 AM on July 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is so cool (also great post title)
posted by Mchelly at 9:38 AM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Good companion reading: Ten years on from the Higgs boson, what is next for physics?. Also about CERN but more what's anticipated from the new experiment they're just starting today. I assume these new hadrons were found in previous data.
posted by Nelson at 9:43 AM on July 5, 2022

Far over my head, but discovering new things not seen before is way cool. They are on penta and tetra quarks. I am still struggling with what a quark is. Elementary particles it says. Oh, now I get it. My spell check keeps insisting on "quack". Maybe I am the quack. "Double open-charm" sounds interesting. I wish I had not gotten a D in HS physics as physics fascinates me.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:47 AM on July 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

I wish I had not gotten a D in HS physics as physics fascinates me.

It’s never too late to start studying!
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:51 AM on July 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

Or, heck, just hunting down popular science books dealing with the topics that interest you….
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:52 AM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you've done a good job of cutting ties with conspiracy theory people the last few years, you may be unaware that the conspiracy theory du jour is that the Hadron Collider is going to open a portal to [something] and we're all doomed.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:00 AM on July 5, 2022 [7 favorites]

the conspiracy theory du jour is that the Hadron Collider is going to open a portal to [something] and we're all doomed.

That theory's been doing the rounds since the first time the LHC was about to be switched on, though.
posted by a car full of lions at 10:06 AM on July 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

I mean, they're just new wrinkles on the conspiracy theories from when it first started up, so I guess points for recycling but a points deduction for lack of originality.

Personally, I'm just hoping it might shift us out of the darkest timeline.
posted by nubs at 10:06 AM on July 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

Paging physicsmatt!
posted by lalochezia at 10:11 AM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wish I had not gotten a D in HS physics as physics fascinates me.

It’s never too late to start studying!

At my age (~60), I am studying physics as I watch my gut sag toward the floor. Friggin gravity.

Actually, I will try to read up on this. Fascinating.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:24 AM on July 5, 2022 [2 favorites]

Physicists who were hoping for a sign of supersymmetry at LHC often grouchily imply that LHC hasn’t seen new physics. But as my nuclear theorist colleague likes to remind me, that’s not at all true— LHC is finding lots of fun new things. Just not supersymmetry (nor some other things a more formal theorist might have hoped for).
posted by nat at 10:31 AM on July 5, 2022

up, up, down, down, charm, strange, charm, strange, top, bottom, start

Konami God code?
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:37 AM on July 5, 2022 [8 favorites]

the conspiracy theory du jour is that the Hadron Collider is going to open a portal to [something] and we're all doomed.

At this point we're doomed anyway so I feel like our best shot is hoping for some kind of hadron-induced parallel universe shift.
posted by babelfish at 10:39 AM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

Can someone who knows physics explain to us laypeople what this discovery means and what its significance is?
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:42 AM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

It always amazes me how elegant Richard Garfield's design was.

If I had a time machine first thing I'd do would be to go back to ~1990 and invent MtG . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:44 AM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

... the conspiracy theory du jour is that the Hadron Collider is going to open a portal to [something] and we're all doomed.

the LHC was shut down from 2013 and restarted in april 2015, i.e., shortly before we entered the darkest timeline. the true conspiracy is that the LHC is about to open a portal to [something] and we're all saved.
posted by logicpunk at 10:48 AM on July 5, 2022 [6 favorites]

“We’re witnessing a period of discovery similar to the 1950s, when a ‘particle zoo’ of hadrons started being discovered and ultimately led to the quark model of conventional hadrons in the 1960s. We’re creating ‘particle zoo 2.0’.”

Sounds like it's been 70 years but the devs finally shipped new DLC.

"last year it found the first-ever instance of a 'double open-charm' tetraquark with two charm quarks and an up and a down antiquark. Open charm means that the particle contains a charm quark without an equivalent antiquark."

Sounds like somebody found a glitch in the physics system.
posted by othrechaz at 10:52 AM on July 5, 2022

I am still struggling with what a quark is.

Just this guy

Runs a bar

Hates root beer
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:03 AM on July 5, 2022 [17 favorites]

Just this guy

Runs a bar

Hates root beer

A marina bar called Disembarq'ed
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:14 AM on July 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

the true conspiracy is that the LHC is about to open a portal to [something] and we're all saved

The real conspiracy, what they don't want you to know, is that two portals were opened and we are simultaneously saved and burned to a fine neutrony crisp.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:48 AM on July 5, 2022 [3 favorites]

two portals were opened
posted by othrechaz at 1:06 PM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

HAARP pauses by the tavern window. Inside, the new kids, Pentaquark and the Tetra Twins, are holding court; you can hear one of the Twins say, "And then JFK Jr. says to me..." and everyone laughs. It's not the new kids that bother HAARP, though; it's the Large Hadron Collider, getting a bit long in the tooth but still invited to all the most paranoid parties. LHC is looking on bemusedly, but before HAARP can turn around, LHC looks toward the window and catches his eye. They look at each other for what seems like an eternity, but is probably only a few seconds, then LHC gives him the tiniest nod, raises his glass a fraction of an inch, and returns his attention to the party. He knows that it's as much a dismissal as an acknowledgement, so he turns around and walks a block and a half. Finally, dreading what he's about to do but unable to stop himself, he takes his phone out and dials an old number. It's a burner phone, of course; been used a few times, which might be a few times too many, but times are tight.

"Hello? Knights? Knights Templar? Yeah, it's me, HAARP. Yeah, I know it's been a while. Listen, I was just thinking about you, and... who? The Illuminati? Oh, OK. Well, sorry to bother you... you were? Really? Oh, hey, yeah, you bet. Yeah, I'm not that far away. Sure. And how about munchies... well, of course nothing with corn syrup in it. I mean, yeah, but also I'm prediabetic. Hah, yeah, no kidding. Be there in a jiffy."

He hangs up, starts to crack the burner, hesitates, then just puts it in his pocket. A slight breeze picks up as he walks down They're Watching You Avenue, and a flyer wafts down the street; it reads THE END IS NIGH in big block letters, to which someone has added BUT NOT NIGH ENOUGH.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:16 PM on July 5, 2022 [7 favorites]

I see you guys aren't familiar with the free-form poetry of the brilliant Dr Sherry Tenpenny.

i want people to remember this term because
you're going to hear a lot of it in the
next year quantum entanglement quantum
entanglement because when that's from a
physics perspective what happens when
you take that shot in there's all this
entangling that goes on and with the
artificial intelligence
hooking you up to the google credit
scores and all the you know all of the
the d the d matrix and all of those
things

it's happening

Tenpenny is a popular (my god you don't understand how popular) anti-vaxxer, probably most famous for sticking a key to her forehead once and for all proving that her skin is clammy. These people love quantum physics because it's so poorly understood by the public. The above is a direct quote.
posted by adept256 at 2:52 PM on July 5, 2022 [4 favorites]

Can someone who knows physics explain to us laypeople what this discovery means and what its significance is?

I'm definitely not the most qualified person on MetaFilter to answer this but I'll give it a go, maybe someone with deeper knowledge can expand more later.

Quarks are one type of the basic elementary particles that make up all matter in the universe. They come in six "flavors," which are named the up quark, down quark, charm quark, strange quark, top (once sometimes called "truth") quark, and bottom (once sometimes called "beauty") quark. Physicists were going through a highly whimsical phase when quarks were being named. Quarks interact with each other primarily via the strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces, and because of an unusual quirk of the way the strong force works, quarks can pretty much never exist independently, but are always bound together into composites called hadrons. This is what the name "Large Hadron Collider" of the particle accelerator at CERN is referring to.

The most important hadrons (particles composed of quarks) are the proton and the neutron, which make up the nuclei of all atoms. These are made of three quarks. Additionally, protons and neutrons interact with each other by the strong nuclear force as well, to make up nuclei. Protons are stable (as far as anyone has been able to determine), while neutrons are stable only if bound into an atomic nucleus. Understanding the ways that protons and neutrons interact to produce stable atomic nuclei is essential to understanding the structure of matter at its most basic level, and understanding how the strong force works is essential to that.

In addition to protons and neutrons, it's long been observed that you can have two-quark composite particles (called mesons), which are relatively short-lived. More recently, a few "exotic hadrons" composed of four or five quarks have been discovered. This news expands on that work with the discovery of several more exotic hadrons, which helps build our understanding of how quarks can interact with each other, and thus how the strong nuclear force works.

In terms of potential applications, I have no idea if this discovery has any significance, but that's usually true for basic science research. But in terms of expanding on the basic science, that's at least my understanding of the significance, as a modestly-educated layperson.
posted by biogeo at 6:50 PM on July 5, 2022 [11 favorites]

Does anyone have any idea what quarks are in neutrinos?
posted by aleph at 7:55 PM on July 5, 2022

Never mind. Neutrinos seem to be Leptons, like the electron. Not Hadrons.
posted by aleph at 8:03 PM on July 5, 2022

Here is a table of the elementary particles of the Standard Model. It is for particle physics what the periodic table of elements is for chemistry.
posted by biogeo at 8:13 PM on July 5, 2022 [1 favorite]

i.e., shortly before we entered the darkest timeline.

Shit, Mayuri is dead?
posted by pwnguin at 11:08 PM on July 5, 2022

The definitive answer to the question is Has The Large Hadeon Colllider Destroyed The World Yet Dot Com.
posted by autopilot at 11:56 PM on July 5, 2022

If you know some college-level physics (through Modern Physics), Frank Close’s books are good. Haven’t yet read his new biography of Higgs but his book on quarks (The New Cosmic Onion) is very enlightening. I can also vouch for Neutrino and Infinity Puzzle.
posted by neuron at 12:15 AM on July 6, 2022

Oh hey, HAARP, huh. Long time. I happen to, uh, know (be married to) a mefite whose quote about microwave weather modification was long used to bolster the credibility of the HAARP conspiracy theories. She's more interested in playing her mandolin nowadays than causing natural disasters for secret government reasons.
posted by tigrrrlily at 7:50 PM on July 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

We’re creating ‘particle zoo 2.0

Some sort of...New Zoo Revue, one might say. (Oh god I am so old)
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:15 PM on July 8, 2022 [2 favorites]