X (3872) is a short-lived particle that has recently been revived in Switzerland. Researchers at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have recently discovered a very rare particle that they believe has existed since the early days of the universe.
Currently, it is referred to as particle X because no one knows exactly what it is, and it was created by colliding billions of heavy ions within the famous particle accelerator here.
The particle has a lifetime of only… one billionth of a second
Specifically, the CMS Collaboration group, which collects data from the LHC’s Compact Muon Solenoid, caused heavy lead atoms to collide at temperatures around 5.5 trillion degrees Celsius (9.9 trillion degrees Fahrenheit). Physicists also hypothesize that in the moments immediately following the Big Bang, matter existed as a form of plasma made up of quarks and gluons, “simmering together in an overly hot soup.”
Only when the plasma cooled a few microseconds after the Big Bang did familiar protons and neutrons form, paving the way for the creation of much heavier forms of matter. However, before the matter cooled down, some quarks and gluons collided, forming more mysterious particles, which physicists call particle X.
They are called particle X because no one knows exactly what it is.
Particle X is very rare today because the universe no longer has the temperature conditions to produce it. Krishna Rajagopal, a particle physicist at MIT, stated: “If you are interested in the properties of the universe at microsecond age, the best way to study it is not by building a telescope but by building an accelerator.”
The research team was able to identify 100 specific particle Xs with the mass known as X (3872), which existed for about one billionth of a second before decaying. X (3872) was first discovered in 2003 through efforts to find distinct blocks, after which researchers identified an unexpected amount of mass or energy in their system.
Patrick Koppenburg, a physicist at the National Institute for Subatomic Physics in the Netherlands and a member of the LHCb group at CERN, remarked: “X (3872) is a strange creature. I was at Belle when it was discovered. We stared at it without understanding what was happening.”
Last year, Koppenburg’s research team at LHCb discovered a new tetraquark particle similar to X (3872), which has a very short lifetime—possibly just over one-fifth of a second. Although other strange particles appear and disappear at the LHC, X (3872) is the first X particle discovered in the quark-gluon plasma created there.
Efforts to generate particle X will continue
The research team behind this study can also mimic the conditions of the early universe by accelerating 13 billion ions. When particles collide, they create thousands of charged particles with short lifetimes. Yen-Jie Lee, a physicist at MIT and co-author of the new study, stated: “There may be other particle Xs present in the recent data, but researchers do not have the proper and best means to detect them.”
Lee wrote: “The first heavy ions in the ‘Run 3’ activity will begin at the end of this year, and we hope to accumulate more data with lead collisions in Run 3 and Run 4. With a much larger dataset, we will be able to determine the enhancement scale of X production in quarks and gain further understanding of its internal structure.”
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Currently, researchers have not yet identified the true “identity” of X (3872), but they believe this particle could be a loosely bound mesonic molecule (two subatomic particles known as mesons bound together through the strong force) or a tetraquark, a type of hadron composed of four quarks stuck together. Jing Wang, a physicist at MIT and head of the new data analysis, stated: “So far, mesonic molecules have not been clearly observed, and X (3872) is a promising candidate. If X (3872) is a mesonic molecule, we believe there must have been many different types of mesonic molecules in the early universe beyond ordinary hadron particles.”
Patrick Koppenburg expressed: “The more data we examine, the more I believe that X is a continuation of a molecule and a charmonium state due to its incredibly short lifetime.” He also noted: “Our brains cannot represent these things… There is no such thing as this or that in quantum mechanics. If you cannot distinguish between two things, then the truth must be simultaneous with both.”
Perhaps the upcoming activities from researchers will finally resolve the identity of X (3872). Of course, after that, it will have a more practical name and will no longer be considered an anonymous particle X.
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