The Belle collaboration at the KEK laboratory in Japan has discovered a new sub-atomic particle which it is calling the “X(3872)”. The particle does not fit into any known particle scheme and theorists are speculating that it might be a hitherto unseen type of meson that contains four quarks (arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0309032; Phys. Rev. Lett. to be published). The discovery has been confirmed by the CDF collaboration at Fermilab in the US, where the new particle is being called the “mystery meson”.
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