Scientists have long been searching for “glue balls,” states associated with subatomic atoms Gallon Particles on their own, without any Subatomic particles included. Now, we may have just found them, hiding in a particle accelerator experiment.
It promises to be a very significant breakthrough in physics, but for the benefit of everyone who doesn’t have a PhD in the subject, we’ll start at the beginning. The main function of gluons is to hold quarks in place and keep atoms stable. Quarks are the building blocks that make up protons and neutrons.
This role makes the gluon part of the strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature that bind the laws of physics together, along with gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak nuclear force.
We hope you are still with us now. Until now, glue balls have been just theoretical hypotheses that physicists believe exist — because gluons should be able to stick together — and not something that’s actually been observed.
Individual gluons do not have any matter, they only carry force, but glue balls have mass resulting from the interactions of the gluons. If we can discover them, it is another indication that our current understanding of the way the universe works, a.k.a Standard Model of Particle PhysicsReally true.
And so on for experiments Beijing Electron-Positron Collider II In China. The collider was used to smash mesons, particles made up of quarks and antiquarks held together by the strong nuclear force.
By sifting through the subatomic debris generated by these particle-smashing sessions — and we’re talking about a decade of data that includes about 10 billion samples — the researchers were able to see evidence of particles with an average mass of 2,395 MeV/c.2. This is the mass that the glue balls are expected to have.
The particle in question is named X(2370), and although some of the other calculations involved don’t quite fit what the researchers were looking for, they’re not far off. More measurements and more observations will be needed to get a definitive answer.
Therefore, there is no complete proof of the existence of glue balls yet, but the evidence is starting to mount. Back in 2015, scientists also thought they had caught a glimpse of glue balls. Before long, another particle may make the jump from theoretical to actual.
Much of this scientific research has been made possible by continuing advances in mathematical techniques and computing power – required to calculate the huge number of possible specific reactions and evolutions, which may have arisen from a ball of glue.
In addition, we now have the equipment and tools needed to probe the basic workings of the natural world, and to produce the billions of molecular states needed to discover something as rare and exotic as a ball of glue.
The research was published in Physical review letters.
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