LHC reveals hints of 'new physics' in particle decays

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LHC-beauty, or LHCb, is an enormous detector designed to examine CP violation

Researchers from the Large Hadron Collider have shown off results that may help explain why the Universe is made largely of matter, not antimatter.

Particles called D-mesons seem to decay slightly more often into one kind of particle rather than another, LHCb physicist Matthew Charles told the HCP 2011 meeting on Monday.

The phenomenon may help explain our matter-dominated Universe.

The team stresses that further analysis will be needed to shore up the result.

At the moment, they are claiming a statistical certainty of "3.5 sigma" - suggesting that there less than a 0.5% chance that the result they see is down to chance.

The team has nearly double the amount of data that they have analysed so far, so time will tell whether the result reaches the "five-sigma" level that qualifies it for a formal discovery.

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TAGGED: PHYSICS, SCIENCE


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