First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)

[Alex K]

So, while the LHC is having a bit of a bumpy start due to certain contaminations in the beam pipe which must be taken care of, people are still analyzing the data from the first run. In those analyses, something interesting has emerged (dyresand already posted about this): one of the less talked-about detectors, LHCb, claims observation of a five quark bound state called a pentaquark. So this is not about discovering a new elementary particle, but about better understanding the strong interaction. It isn't yet clear whether it is a tight bound state of four quarks and an antiquark, ir rather a more loose bound state

http://lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-publ...html#Penta