Brand New Particle Discovered at CERN An entirely new type of
particle has been discovered by scientists using the world’s
largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC), near Geneva, Switzerland. The discovery of the
new particle, called “neutral Xi_b^star baryon,” was made by the
CMS experiment, one of six separate particle physics experiments
running at the LHC. “Besides helping to understand how quarks
bind and therefore further validate the theory of strong
interactions, one of the four basic forces of physics, this
measurement ... opens up good perspectives for future
discoveries,” wrote Carlos Lourenco, a senior researcher with
the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the
organization that oversees the experiments at the giant
accelerator. The new type of particle is so rare, due in part to
its composition: It is made up of three quarks which normally
aren’t found locked together, that it cannot occur anywhere else
on Earth outside of the accelerator, and