The quark-smashing experiments were carried out at Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator. Fermilab is a U.S. Department of Energy facility located 30 miles west of Chicago. Iowa State participants played a big role, an essential role, in this discovery. The recent discovery reaffirms the quark theory of the structure of matter called the standard model, Anderson explained. The elusive top quark was the last to surrender its secrets to physicists.
Quarks are the basic building blocks of all matter.
Together with the electron and its neutrino, they make up all that we see on Earth and in the nearby universe, said Hauptman. Presumably, these heavier quarks have not existed since the Big Bang creation of the universe some 15 billion years ago, Hauptman said. The physicists discovered the top quark by measuring its final decay products in the DZero detector at Fermilab. Hauptman said that the Iowa State researchers developed a data analysis filtering technique used in the experiment. The technique helped the physicists sort out background data and hone in on authentic top quark data.