CERN finds a boson, but not the Higgs boson

From ITWire: CERN finds a boson, but not the Higgs boson
The Swiss particle physics organization European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced on Thursday, December 22, 2011, that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has discovered a boson called Chi-b(3P).

Although the discovery was not the Higgs boson, it is in the right direction for eventually finding the elusive particle.

The discovered particle is called Chi-b(3P). It is a type of boson, meaning that it is a subatomic particle that carries force (and obeys Bose-Einstein statistics) – one that is called a force carrier particle.

And, while the Higgs boson is believed to not be made of smaller particles, the Chi-b(3P) does consist of smaller particles.

Specifically, Chi-b(3P) is made of the beauty (bottom) quark and its anti-bottom quark, and these two particles are held together by the strong nuclear force.

The Chi-b(3P) was predicted to exist a quarter of a century earlier, but until now, it had never-before been observed.

For more on this exciting story, please read the BBC News article “LHC reports discovery of its first new particle.”

In part, the BBC News article states, “The LHC is designed to fill in gaps in the Standard Model…. In particular, it is using the collisions to try to pin down the famous Higgs particle, which physicists hypothesize can explain why matter has mass. Discoveries such as Chi_b (3P) are an important part of this quest because they add to the wider background knowledge….”