After A Search Of 48 Years, Physicists Found An Ultra-Rare “Triple Glueball” Particle

After A Search Of 48 Years, Physicists Found An Ultra-Rare “Triple Glueball” Particle
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The event is a substantial scientific breakthrough, as predicted in 1973 but was never observed in the real world.

A unique particle has revealed itself thanks to the collaboration of two-particle colliders, confirming the half-century-old theory.

Scientists predicted the existence of the particle, called the odderon, in 1973. It was described as a rare, short-lived conjoinment of gluons, which are smaller particles.

Since then, researchers suspected that the odderon might be born when protons are slammed together at tremendous speeds, but the exact conditions that would lead to that remained a mystery for decades.

After comparing data from the Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile-long ring-shaped atom smasher close to Geneva that is very popular for discovering the Higgs boson, and the Tevatron and a now-defunct 3.9-mile-long American collider that used to slam antiprotons and protons in Illinois until 2011, researchers found conclusive evidence of the odderon.

The scientists analyzed the resulted data from the particle collisions.

They postulated that the odderons would result at slightly different rates in proton-proton collisions and proton-antiproton collisions, LiveScience reported.

The researchers behind the new paper formed a mathematical approach to compare the data from the two collisions.

The comparison resulted in a so-called “money plot.”

It turned out that the odderons are, fundamentally, a rare combination of three gluons, some “sticky” particles.

When protons collide with immense energies inside particle colliders, they shatter into tiny pieces in 3 out of 4 cases. In the remaining case, they bounce off one another like pool balls on a table.

In that case, the protons survive the encounter. Scientists believe that it happens because the protons exchange two or three gluons. At the short point of contact, the gluons travel from one proton’s interior to the interior of the other.


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Anna is an avid blogger with an educational background in medicine and mental health. She is a generalist with many other interests including nutrition, women's health, astronomy and photography. In her free time from work and writing, Anna enjoys nature walks, reading, and listening to jazz and classical music.

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