Thursday, April 10, 2014

LHC makes clear identification of a weird particle made of four quarks

Ars Technica reports LHC makes clear identification of a weird particle made of four quarks "With that much data, physicists were able to determine the composition of the Z(4430)-: it consists of a charm quark, a charm anti-quark, a down quark, and an up antiquark. The '4430' part of the name indicates its mass: 4,430 million electron-volts, which a little more than four times the mass of a proton (938 million electron volts). The combination of quarks gives the Z(4430)- a negative electric charge, hence the '-' in the label. The particle is highly unstable, so none of them are expected to be seen in nature."

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