When I turned 4 years old I became eligible to register for a local soccer team. For the next 14 years I played soccer and enjoyed how it felt to play. Earlier this week, my niece began practicing for her first soccer game by kicking around with the goal my brother (her father who also played soccer growing up) setup in their backyard. On Friday, she not only fearlessly ran around and participated, she scored her first goal in her first game! Our whole family is very proud of her.
B-mesons are composed of a light quark, which we find in the subatomic particles of matter, as well as a heavy beauty antiquark, which can be created in the LHC collider. The particles, made up of pairs of quark-antiquark, are unstable so they decay rapidly.
Recent observation of the decay of B-mesons show two muons among its products. What could be the reason for the observed effect? The most popular hypothesis among theorists is "the existence of a new intermediate Z-prime boson (Z') involved in the decay of B mesons. It also explains another, slightly weaker effect observed in other decays of B mesons to measure what is called lepton universality."
Despite the unusual findings, perhaps the theoretical calculations do not take into account some important factors affecting the decay mechanism - yet can still be some subset of the Standard Model. The LHC has recently began another round of colliding protons at higher energy levels. After more data is at our disposal, it becomes more likely that the implications of current finding will be either validated or dismissed.
References:
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-trailer-upcoming-lhc-blockbuster.html
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