Scientists yesterday announced the discovery of two "rare jewels," two subatomic particles that are exotic relatives of the much more common proton and neutron. Although the new particles existed for less than a millionth of a second before decaying, the finding may help unveil secrets of the early universe and lead to the discovery of more particles. The announcement was made by researchers of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia. CDF (the Collider Detector at Fermilab) is an international experiment of 700 physicists from 61 institutions and 13 countries, supported by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and a number of international funding agencies. In a scientific presentation on Friday, October 20, CDF physicist Petar Maksimovic, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, presented the discovery of two new subatomic particles to the particle physics community at Fermilab. He explained that the two types of Sigma-sub-b particles are produced in two different spin combinations, J=1/2 and J=3/2, representing a ground state and an excited state, as predicted by theory. (Photos: Fermilab) "These particles, named Sigma-sub-b [Σb], are like rare jewels that we mined out of our data," said Jacobo Konigsberg, University of Florida, a spokesperson for the CDF collaboration. "Piece by piece, we are developing a better picture of how matter is built out of quarks. We learn more about the subatomic forces that hold quarks together and tear them apart. Our discovery helps complete the 'periodic table of baryons.'" Baryons (derived from the Greek word "barys", meaning "heavy") are particles that contain three quarks, the most fundamental building blocks of matter. The CDF collaboration discovered two types of Sigma-sub-b particles, each one about six times heavier than a proton. There are six different types of quarks: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top (u, d, s, c, b and t). The two types of baryons discovered by the CDF experiment are made of two up quarks and one bottom quark (u-u-b), and two down quarks and a bottom quark (d-d-b). For comparison, protons are u-u-d combinations, while neutrons are d-d-u. The new particles are extremely short-lived and decay within a tiny fraction of a second. Using Fermilab's Tevatron collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, physicists can recreate the conditions present in the early formation of the universe, reproducing the exotic matter that was abundant in the moments after the big bang. While the matter around us is comprised of only up and down quarks, exotic matter contains other quarks as well. The CDF detector, about the size of a three-story house, weighs about 6000 tons. Its subsystems record the "debris" emerging from high-energy proton-antiproton collisions, unveiling the secrets of the early universe. The detector surrounds the collision point and records the path, energy and charge of exotic, short-lived particles emerging from the collisions. The Tevatron collider at Fermilab accelerates protons and antiprotons close to the speed of light and makes them collide. In the collisions, energy transforms into mass, according to Einstein's famous equation E=mc2. To beat the low odds of producing bottom quarks --which in turn transform into the Sigma-sub-b according to the laws of quantum physics -- scientists take advantage of the billions of collisions produced by the Tevatron each second. "It's amazing that scientists can build a particle accelerator that produces this many collisions, and equally amazing that the CDF collaboration was able to develop a particle detector that can measure them all," said CDF co-spokesman Rob Roser of Fermilab. "We are confident that our data hold the secret to even more discoveries that we will find with time." Using the Tevatron, the CDF and DZero collaborations at Fermilab discovered the top quark, the final and most massive quark, in 1995. The CDF experiment identified 103 u-u-b particles, positively charged Sigma-sub-b particles (Σ+b), and 134 d-d-b particles, negatively charged Sigma-sub-b particles (Σ-b). In order to find this number of particles, scientists culled through more than 100 trillion high-energy proton-antiproton collisions produced by the Tevatron over the last five years. In a scientific presentation on Friday, Oct. 20, CDF physicist Petar Maksimovic, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, presented the discovery to the particle physics community at Fermilab. He explained that the two types of Sigma-sub-b particles are produced in two different spin combinations, J=1/2 and J=3/2, representing a ground state and an excited state, as predicted by theory. Quark theory predicts six different types of baryons with one bottom quark and spin J=3/2. The CDF experiment now accounts for two of these baryons. Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy, operated under contract by Universities Research Association Inc. For more information, visit: www.fnal.gov