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  "path": "/news/1983233/new-particle-discovered-by-large-hadron-collider",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-18T03:05:33.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.dawn.com",
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    "World"
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  "textContent": "PARIS: The Large Hadron Collider has discovered a new particle, the 80th identified so far by the world’s most powerful particle smasher, Europe’s CERN physics laboratory announced on Tuesday.\n\nThe new particle has been named “Xi-cc-plus”.\n\nThe Large Hadron Collider is a 27-kilometre-long proton-smashing ring running about 100 metres below France and Switzerland.\n\nThe latest discovery comes as CERN plans to build an even bigger particle smasher, the Future Circular Collider, to continue probing the mysteries of the universe.\n\n> \n\nScientists hope the particle, which is similar to a proton but four times hea­vier, will reveal more about the strange behaviour of quantum mechanics.\n\nAll the matter around us, including the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus of atoms, are made of baryons. These common particles are composed of three quarks, which are fundamental building blocks of matter.\n\nQuarks come in six “flavours”: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom. Each has varying mass, electric charge and quantum properties.\n\nIn theory, there could be many different types of baryons that mix these flavours, however most are extremely difficult to observe.\n\nTo chase them down, the Large Hadron Collider sends particles whizzing around an underground ring at phenomenal speeds until they smash into each other. This gives scientists a brief chance to measure how the more stable elements decay, then deduce the properties of the original particle.\n\nThe newly discovered “Xi-cc-plus” contains two “charm” qua­rks and one “down” quark. Normal protons have two “up” quarks and one “down” quark. Because the new particle has two heavier “charm” quarks instead of “up” ones, it has a much greater mass.\n\nVincenzo Vagnoni, spokesman for the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment, said it was “only the second time a baryon with two heavy quarks has been observed”. It was also “the first new particle identified after the upgrades to the LHCb detector that were completed in 2023,” he said.\n\nAccording to him, the result will help theorists test models of quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong force that binds quarks into not only conventional baryons and mesons but also more exotic hadrons such as tetraquarks and pentaquarks.\n\nIn 2017, the LHCb experiment announced that it had discovered a similar particle, made of two “charmed” quarks and one “up” quark.\n\nThe new particle has an expected lifetime six times shorter than this earlier one, making it far trickier to spot, CERN pointed out.\n\n_Published in Dawn, March 18th, 2026_",
  "title": "New particle discovered by Large Hadron Collider"
}