The image captured in July or the proton-proton collision that shows never before seen links between some particles.
Credit: CERN
GENEVA: Some particles are linked in a way not seen before, say researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Results from one of the detectors in the LHC experiment indicated that "some of the particles are intimately linked in a way not seen before in proton collisions," the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said on its website.
The phenomenon showed up as a "ridge-like structure" on graphs based on data from billions of proton collisions in the 3.9-billion-euro (5.2-billion-dollar) machine.
review outside CERN needed
In proton-proton collisions, a hundred or more particles can be produced. “The CMS collaboration has studied such collisions by measuring angular correlations between the particles as they fly away from the point of impact, and this has revealed that some of the particles are intimately linked in a way not seen before in proton collisions,” according to CERN’s website.
"The new feature has appeared in our analysis around the middle of July," physicist Guido Tonelli told fellow CERN scientists at a seminar to present the findings from the collider's CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector.
"We have today submitted a paper to expose our findings to the wider (scientific) community," he added, underlining caution and the need for the peer review outside CERN.
Extensive cross-checks
Nonetheless, Tonelli, a physicist from Italy's University of Pisa and scientific spokesperson for the CMS detector, underlined that during weeks of cross-checks and critical debate among the team, "we didn't succeed to kill it."
The 27-kilometre circular particle accelerator buried under the French-Swiss border is recreating powerful but microscopic bursts of energy that mimic conditions close to the Big Bang that created the universe.
The proton-proton collisions that revealed the ridge-like structure had an energy of 7 TeV. CERN hopes to double this energy value in the future.
