Two New Subatomic Particles

The "Beauty" experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHCb) has identified two never-before-seen baryonic particles named Xi_b′ and Xi_b*, each one consisting of a beauty (b), a strange (s) and a down (d) quark.

Majorana Particle Signature

Researchers have seen the first evidence of a so-called Majorana particle, a theoretical particle that is simultaneously its own corresponding antiparticle, on a chain of iron atoms placed on the surface of a lead-based superconductor.

Conflicting Neutron Decay Results

Physicists have found conflicting results for the natural decay of the neutron that depend upon the type of experiment used, with discrete lifetimes of 887.7 seconds and 878.5 seconds from two different methods lying outside experimental error and that may point to new physics not yet understood.

Shape-Shifting Neutrinos Seen

Japan's Super-Kamiokande detector has found its first evidence that neutrinos interact with matter through detection of predicted levels of high-energy solar neutrino oscillations as they pass through the bulk of the Earth.

Weak Force Directly Measured

Researchers with the Q-weak experiment at the Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have made the first direct measurement of the value of the weak force, one of the four fundamental forces described in the Standard Model, for the proton, the neutron, and the up and down quarks.

Neutrino Flavor Flip Confirmed

Researchers at Japan's Super-Kamiokande laboratory have evidence of muon neutrinos changing to their electron counterpart "flavor" during mid-flight, the first such confirmation of predicted flavor oscillations with implications that their corresponding anti-particles may interact asymmetrically (CP violation).

Tetraquark Candidate Found

Researchers at KEK's Belle Collaboration and Beijing's BESIII Collaboration have independently reported evidence for a tetraquark particle designated Z_c(3900), the strongest evidence yet for matter consisting of more than three quarks.

Smaller Measurements of Proton

New high-precision measurement techniques have consistently produced a result for the radius of a proton (muonic hydrogen) of 0.84 femtometers, a value 4% smaller (0.03 femtometers) than the accepted constant value determined by other techniques and possibly involving unknown physics.

New Type of Matter Created

Collisions of protons and lead ions at the Large Hadron Collider have unexpectedly created a new state of exotic matter called a color-glass condensate, a liquid-like wave of gluons that may result from the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.

Supersymmetry Result Fails

Results found at Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) show the very rare decay of a B_s meson into two muons, the first time this decay has been observed, providing a failed "golden" test for supersymmetry whose model predicts this decay with much greater frequency than detected.

CERN Discovers Higgs Boson

The European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) has released data it claims is "consistent with" the Higgs boson, a particle theoretically predicted in the 1960s and one of the final unknown elements of the Standard Model as the key to understanding the nature of matter itself.

New Subatomic Particle Found

Predicted by theory but never before observed, a new subatomic particle has been detected at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector of CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an extremely short-lived baryon named Xi(b)*.

Lack of Neutrinos from GRBs

The failure of the South Pole's IceCube telescope to detect any neutrinos knocked down the leading theory on  their connection to gamma ray bursts (GRB), removing a leading explanation for the origin of ultra high energy cosmic rays.

Electron Decay Observed in Solid

Electrons has been observed splitting into two particles (named "spinion" and "orbiton") within the copper-oxide compound Sr₂CuO₃, each carrying the spin and orbital quantum properties but restricted only within the material in which they were produced.

Majorana Fermion Detected

The first evidence has been found of a theoretical particle called a Majorana fermion, a strange particle that is its own antiparticle and whose existence was first predicted by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937.

New Neutrino Transformation

Physicists have measured and recorded the third previously unseen neutrino mixing angle, dubbed θ13 or "theta one three," by which an electron neutrino can oscillate or transform into one of the other two neutrino flavors, muon or tau.

Earth's Antiproton Ring

The European PAMELA satellite has detected a ring of naturally occurring antiprotons that surrounds Earth, confined by the inner magnetic field of the Van Allen radiation belts in much the same way scientists trap antiprotons in the laboratory.

New Subatomic Particle

Physicists of Fermilab's CDF collaboration have announced the detection of a new subatomic particle, the Xi-sub-b (Ξ_b⁰), predicted by the Standard Model and composed of a strange quark, an up quark and a bottom quark.

Neutrinos Flip Flavors

The multinational T2K detector in Japan has seen preliminary data that suggests the phenomenon of "neutrino oscillation," that neutrinos spontaneously change between the flavors of electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino, which potentially could lead to an explanation of CP violation.

Densest Matter Created

Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has created a quark-gluon plasma, the densest known material outside of black holes and a state that has not existed naturally since a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.