N.Y. Physicists announce the detection in today's issue of Physics Review Letters. In the standard model of physics, a theoretical body of knowledge that has accumulated over 30 years, three quarks make a proton or neutron, and two can combine to make another subatomic particle known as a meson.
Quarks are the most basic type of subatomic particle known.
That standard model also predicted that quarks could combine in unusual ways to form what are known as exotic mesons. These particles were difficult to observe, however, because of their rarity and the fact that they only can exist for about a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. The Brookhaven experiments didn't actually see an exotic meson but found evidence for them in the debris created by a high-energy collision between particles. Click here for help on searching . Contact the webmasters at The Topeka Capital-Journal .