Scientists observe a new form of strange matter

In a discovery that could provide new insights into the origin of mass in the universe following the Big Bang, scientists from the international J-PARC E15 Collaboration, led by researchers from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research (CPR) have used experiments with kaons and helium-3 to experimentally demonstrate, for the first time, the existence of an exotic nucleus containing two protons and a bound kaon.

Kaons are a type of meson—a group of extremely short-lived particles that mediate the strong force that binds protons and neutrons inside the atomic nucleus, consisting of an anti-quark and quark pair. The existence of mesons was first proposed by Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa in 1935, and after they were discovered to exist he became the first Japanese to receive a Nobel Prize for his efforts. K mesons have recently become an important topic of research, as they usually exist as "virtual particles" that pop in and out of existence in the nucleus, but it might become real bound particle in a nucleus and become for a fleeting moment a part of an exotic nucleus, along with the typical neutrons and protons, since there is a slight time lag before the anti-quark and quark annihilate. Understanding how this happened could provide insights into mysteries such as the origin of mass and the quantum phenomenon of "color confinement." However, this state had never been observed in the real world.