New Particle Discovered At CERN

New submitter ph4cr writes with news that a new particle has been discovered at CERN that confirms theoretical predictions. A pre-print of the academic paper is available at the arXiv (PDF). From the article: "Physicists from the University of Zurich have discovered a previously unknown particle composed of three quarks in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator. A new baryon could thus be detected for the first time at the LHC. The baryon known as Xi_b^* confirms fundamental assumptions of physics regarding the binding of quarks. ... In the course of proton collisions in the LHC at CERN, physicists Claude Amsler, Vincenzo Chiochia and Ernest Aguiló from the University of Zurich's Physics Institute managed to detect a baryon with one light and two heavy quarks. The particle Xi_b^* comprises one 'up,' one 'strange' and one 'bottom' quark (usb), is electrically neutral and has a spin of 3/2 (1.5). Its mass is comparable to that of a lithium atom. The new discovery means that two of the three baryons predicted in the usb composition by theory have now been observed."

I'm not ready for this.

[ScentCone]

I'm only just now using devices ready for usb 3.0, and here comes another one.

I can confirm it!

[Anonymous Coward]

... and has a spin of 3/2 (1.5). ...

I don't know about the rest of the summary, but I can confirm that 3/2 is in fact 1.5.

Re:WTF am I supposed to call this thing?

[zAPPzAPP]

USB quark (1.0)

Re:chi b star

[zAPPzAPP]

So it was named after a Sailormoon character?

Xi_b^* ?

[DJCouchyCouch]

Someone's been looking at my coworker's variable names.

Re:WTF am I supposed to call this thing?

[kevingolding2001]

Physicists from the University of Zurich have discovered a previously unknown particle

I'm going to go with "The particle formerly known as unknown", or just "The particle".

Re:WTF am I supposed to call this thing?

[maxwell demon]

It's LaTeX, you moron. It's the Greek letter Xi with a "b" in the subscript and a "*" in the superscript. So just call it Xi-b-star or Xi-b-asterix. Simple.

And how would you write Xi-b-obelix? ;-)

Sadly, I just ran out of mod points

[Kupfernigk]

In fact this particle is pretty massive already, as TFA notes (around the mass of a lithium atom). So presumably a Xi_b^obelix would mass as much as a menhir.