In December of last year, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe announced startling results hinting at the existence of an undiscovered subatomic particle -- one with a mass six times heavier than the Higgs boson, the particle that made headlines in 2012.
The evidence is still thin, but if more data confirm the finding, it could sharpen humankind's understanding of the building blocks of the universe.
"This was a very surprising announcement and a puzzle at the same time, because the lifetime and mass of the particle could reveal something else beyond simply one extra particle, if it turns out to be a real signal," said Kyoungchul "K.C." Kong, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. "Yet we do not claim this as a discovery, and we need more data."
Based on the LHC findings, theoretical physicists around the world rushed to offer ideas that could explain the mystery signal and guide further experimentation. Physical Review Letters, the leading peer-reviewed journal in the field, received hundreds of papers purporting to illuminate the LHC results.
"We explore ideas," Kong said of theoretical particle physicists. "Probably most of ideas are wrong -- but we learn from them, and we propose better ideas."
Of the mountain of papers tendered to Physical Review Letters about the LHC findings, the journal chose to publish only four -- including one co-authored by Kong, who had the original idea behind the submission.
The KU physicist said the enigmatic signal, detected at 750 giga-electron volts, or GeV, suggests "the first hint for new particles beyond the Standard Model." (The Standard Model of particle physics is a longstanding theory used to explain the forces and subatomic particles working in atoms that constitute all known matter in the universe.)
He said, "Every explanation of the 750 GeV excess needs a new particle. Most models assume one around 750 GeV."
But Kong's idea is different than most. Rather than basing his theory on the existence of a "resonance" particle with a straightforwardly corresponding mass to trigger the 750 GeV signal, Kong's paper proposes a sequence of particles at different masses, without one at 750 GeV.
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