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The tetraquarks are coming. Or are they?

 

Like this, but four of them, compressed into a tight ball.

There has been grumblings since July that some of the folks over at LHC may have discovered a new fundamental particle: the dicharm tetraquark.

OK its really more like this. But don't you want to live in a world where they look like Star Trek Quark? I do.

From Quanta Magazine:

[Igor] Polyakov went away and double-checked his analysis of data from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment, which the Syracuse group is part of. The evidence held. It showed that a particular set of four fundamental particles called quarks can form a tight clique, contrary to the belief of most theorists. The LHCb collaboration reported the discovery of the composite particle, dubbed the double-charm tetraquark, at a conference in July and in two papers posted earlier this month that are now undergoing peer review.

Everybody loves a new particle. But early results from the LHC have jumped the gun before. And there is a debate about what exactly the LHC results mean. The leading alternative explanation at this point is the observation detected not a new composite particle but a rare Triangle Singularity:

Quarks have maintained an aura of mystery since their discovery. The leading theoretical description of their behavior, chromodynamics, is at best a very rough approximation of their behavior and at worst impractical for use because of the complexity of the math involved.

Stay tuned.