Remember “phantom” particle? If not, let me remind you. In 1977, theoretical physicists predicted that there should exist a particle with no charge and the term “axion” was coined for that partical in their papers. After that theoretical work, both theoretical and experimental physicists were chasing the axion using low-, medium- and high-energy accelerator beams from different laboratories worldwide. But when it proved to be too elusive, many in the physics community then abandoned the search in the 1990s, based on puzzling evidence that perhaps this tantalizing particle didn’t exist after all. Some groups flatly denied its existence and began referring to it as a “phantom.”
But after decades of intensive effort by both experimental and theoretical physicists worldwide, a tiny particle with no charge, a very low mass and a lifetime much shorter than a nanosecond, dubbed the “axion,” has now been detected by the University at Buffalo physicist who first suggested its existence in a little-read paper as early as 1974.
The axion has been seen as critical to the Standard Model of Physics and is believed to be a component of much of the dark matter in the universe. These results show that scientists have detected axions, part of a family of particles that likely also includes the very heavy Higgs-Boson particle, which at present is being sought after at different laboratories. After they are produced, axions rapidly decay into two electron pairs, the electron and the positron.
Via: Slashdot
