After 50 Years, Physicists May Have Finally Found a Particle Made of Pure Force
Gluons are the quantum 'Gorilla Glue' involved in binding quarks together, ScienceAlert reminds us. But for nearly 50 years, physicists have hunted for "glueballs", exotic particles predicted by this theory of the strong interaction — the only type of particle in nature composed entirely of force mediators: Now, a collaboration working at a collider in Beijing says it has the clearest evidence…
Scientists may have finally found the elusive "glueball," a particle composed entirely of force mediators known as gluons, after 50 years of searching. Gluons are the quantum Gorilla Glue in the strong interaction that binds quarks together. The team from the Beijing Electron Positron Collider II conducted a study on high-energy particle collisions, using electrons collided with their antimatter counterparts, positrons.
This analysis of nearly 10 billion meson decay events provided strong evidence that the X(2370) particle is dominated by a glueball, an unprecedented form of matter. Physics enthusiast Jin Shan stated that this discovery not only validates the theory describing strong interactions but also expands the boundaries of our understanding of the physical world.
The researchers now aim to further confirm and constrain the prototypes of the highly esoteric glueball through more experiments.
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