Cern physicists find evidence of three new ‘exotic’ particles as Large Hadron Collider comes back online

‘The more analyses we perform, the more kinds of exotic hadrons we find’

Physicists observing data from the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration in Geneva have found three never-before-seen “exotic” particles, adding to a growing list of sub-atomic particles that scientists know to make up the universe.

The newly discovered particles – described at a seminar on Tuesday – include a previously unseen pentaquark and the first-ever pair of tetraquarks that includes a whole new type of tetraquark.

Situated underground on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, the LHCb collaboration is one of the four large experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern that specialises in studying the slight differences between matter and antimatter by studying quarks.