After running at record-breaking speeds, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has made its first major discovery. Today, a team of scientists announced that they've found a new class of subatomic particles known as pentaquarks.
As reported by Georgia State University, quarks are a series of charged subatomic particles that combine to form larger particles called hadrons - the most stable of which are protons and neutrons. First proposed in 1964 by American physicist Murray Gell-Mann, their existence redefined the way the public thought about particle physicists.
Back then, the pentaquark was a theoretical particle composed of four quarks and an antiquark, but now CERN researchers claim that their existence is irrefutable.
The team identified the existence of the pentaquark by studying the way a subatomic particle called Lambda b decayed - or transformed - into three other particles inside LHCb (J-psi, a proton and a charged kaon). The analysis revealed that two previously unobserved particles could be identified during the transition state, according to Gizmodo.
