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Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research have combined their results and observed a previously unseen subatomic process. A joint analysis by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and LHC-beauty (LHCb) collaborations has established a new and extremely rare decay of the Bs particle (a heavy composite particle consisting of a bottom antiquark and a strange quark) into two muons.
Theorists had predicted that this decay would only occur about four times out of a billion, and that is roughly what the two experiments observed. LHCb and CMS both study the properties of particles to search for cracks in the Standard Model, our best description so far of the behavior of all directly observable matter in the universe. The Standard Model is known to be incomplete since it does not address issues such as the presence of dark matter or the abundance of matter over antimatter in the universe. Any deviations from this model could be evidence of new physics at play, such as new particles or forces that could provide answers to these mysteries.Image credit: CMS/LHCb collaborations
