U.S. Collider Offers Physicists a Glimpse of a Possible New Particle

Physicists sifting through data generated by the Tevatron particle collider in Illinois have uncovered a signal that neither they nor the long-standing Standard Model of particle physics can explain.

The international team of researchers work with data from CDF, one of the two Tevatron detectors where protons and their antimatter counterparts collide at nearly light speed. The wreckage of those high-energy collisions produces a variety of short-lived particles, which allows physicists a fleeting glimpse into the inner workings of the physical world. The Tevatron, at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, is the second most powerful particle collider in the world after the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland.