"Cascade B" Particle Discovered At Fermilab

pnotequalsnp writes to note that physicists at Fermilab have discovered a new heavy particle called the Cascade B. This is the first particle ever seen that is made up of quarks representing all three quark families. A team of 610 physicists from 88 institutions reported the discovery in a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters last week. This must be the discovery that triggered rumors that the Higgs had been found.

interesting

[wizardforce]

with a mass of 5.774±0.019 GeV/c2, approximately six times the proton mass. The newly discovered electrically charged b baryon, also known as the "cascade b," is made of a down, a strange and a bottom quark. It is the first observed baryon formed of quarks from all three families of matter. judging by its componants, it should have a (-1/3*3=-1) charge of -1. strange quark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_quark [wikipedia.org] Bottom quark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_quark [wikipedia.org] Down quark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_quark [wikipedia.org]

What's the significance?

[emjoi_gently]

I read the article, and got the gist of what they have found, but what does it mean? Why is is important? Is there any practical upshot of the discovery?

Unlikely to match the Higgs rumors...

[jpflip]

The article describes a new particle with a mass a bit over 5 GeV. This is interesting, but is very different from the supposed resonance at ~180 GeV appearing in the rumors from the Tevatron. It seems pretty unlikely these are related. We'll still have to wait and hear from Dzero on the original rumors (probably just an analysis issue).

Re:610 physicists

[BigFoot48]

610 is not a "team", it's a "sign here to get your name on a paper" gaggle.

Re:What's the significance?

[rumith]

"Research is the transformation of money to knowledge. Innovation is the transformation of knowledge to money."
Dr. Hans Meixner.

Three more years...

[stox]

and that's it. Fermilab has nothing scheduled past then, and will have passed the torch to the LHC. I admit it, I am biased, having worked at Fermilab, but I find this to be tragic. Nowhere else have I had the opportunity to work with such an incredible group of people. Closing Fermilab will be an incredible loss to this country. I can only hope that the International Linear Collider will be built, and will be built at Fermilab. Time will tell.

Congratulations to the folks at DZero on yet another fine piece of work!

where has this thing been all this time?

[wizardforce]

The article describes a new particle with a mass a bit over 5 GeV. This is interesting, but is very different from the supposed resonance at ~180 GeV appearing in the rumors from the Tevatron. It seems pretty unlikely these are related.

I would imagine that there is some sort of resonance phenomenon going on here. [any particle physicists know if this is even remotely accurate?] something else that is interesting about it is that we are just now finding a particle with a mass of about 6 GEV and we have particle accelerators capable of creating something over a hundred times that massive; so why now? why is it that the particle formation cross-section is so low? does the standard model have anything to say about this?

Re:610 physicists

[Silver Sloth]

One way to build a solid team is to get complete involvement from the bottom to the top. If, at the end of the day, all the personnel who worked on the project get to put their names on the paper it shows how their work is valued and how much they are 'part of the team'.

And as for team size being limited - I'll bet that during the better days at NASA, say during the Apollo missions, everyone right down to the janitor felt that they were part of the team - and, if you don't think that janitors are important just wait until the next time the toilet blocks.

Heim?

[blincoln]

So does Heim's theory [wikipedia.org] predict the existence and mass of this particle with the same accuracy as the others in the Standard Model?