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China discovers new sub-atomic particle |
CCTV.COM 2003-08-02 15:08:41 |
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A China-US research team has discovered a new sub-atomic particle. The discovery was made at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider through the Beijing Electron Spectrometer, or BES, International Collaboration. The discovery, published and reported by the "Physical Review Letters," has aroused broad international interest.
This new particle, with a mass of about 1859 MeV and a width of less than 30 MeV, was discovered in J/y radioactive decay to proton and anti-proton process. It should be emphasized that the mass of this particle is smaller than the sum of proton and anti-proton masses. In the analysis of 8 million J/y data collected at the BES in early 90's, there had been some clues to the existence of this particle. However, due to the limited statistics, it had not been determined as a new particle at that time.
Chen Heheng, director of Institute of High Energy Physics, said, "The new particle is really different. That is why everybody is so interested in it. But now is just the start of the long term research work. We should do a more comprehensive data analysis on it."
The discovery of this new resonance state is the result of long-term and close collaboration between the Chinese and American scientists within the BES Collaboration.
Being a new hot research topic of high energy physics, the experimental research on charm quark physics is facing strong competition. And the research on the new particle needs more and more scientists with greater efforts to make it possible.
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Editor: Xiao Wei CCTV.com
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