After a 42-year search, a team of researchers at Cern in Switzerland has witnessed a one-in-10 billion event: a subatomic particle called a beauty meson decaying and producing two even smaller particles known as muons. The finding could lead experts to particles that exist at the scale of one zeptometre, a billionth of a trillionth of a metre.
The Rarest Decay
Beauty mesons exist for less than two trillionths of a second before decaying, and only one in every 10 billion undergoes this specific type of decay, making muon particles incredibly difficult to detect. The discovery was made using the Large Hadron Collider.
What the Researchers Say
Dr Harry Cliff, who led the analysis team at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, said physicists had been looking for this type of decay since before he was born. He said: "Seeing clear evidence of this rarest decay for the first time was thrilling."
The find proves the power of the upgraded Large Hadron Collider and paves the way for glimpsing never-before-seen particles that exist at extremely small scales with very high energy levels. Dr Cliff said: "We're knocking on the door of the zeptoverse now. I can't wait to see what we find as we explore deeper."
Professor Brian Cox, a broadcaster and particle physicist at the University of Manchester, added: "This is an important result and a beautiful example of how science advances – we cannot know whether this progress will be incremental or genuinely world-changing."
UK Funding Concerns
The British-led research has shone a light on the government's decision to withdraw the UK's £45m contribution to the Large Hadron Collider experiment, which may solve some of the biggest mysteries in physics. Dr Cliff said: "It's personally frustrating to think [that] UK scientists may no longer be able to continue doing this sort of research if we're not paying our share of the cost."
