Protons and neutrons, which together with electrons form atoms, are made up of even smaller particles called quarks. Protons and neutrons contain three quarks each.
Scientists at the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider just discovered two particles made up of not three, not four, but five quarks—the first observed pentaquarks. Scientists have been searching for this class of particles for about 50 years.
“The pentaquark is not just any new particle,” says LHCb spokesperson Guy Wilkinson of University of Oxford. “Studying its properties may allow us to understand better how ordinary matter, the protons and neutrons from which we’re all made, is constituted.”
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