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CERN Confirms Ultra-Rare Particle Transformation, Hints at New Physics
Particle collider @CERN, a rarely-seen event is bringing us tantalizingly close to the brink of new physics... Clapping

From years of running what is known as the NA62 experiment, particle physicist Cristina Lazzeroni of the University of Birmingham in the UK and her colleagues have now established, experimentally observed, and measured the decay of a charged kaon particle into a charged pion and a neutrino-antineutrino pair. The researchers have presented their findings at a CERN seminar.

Mysterious Mixing: Good things often come in threes, and the

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 Standard Model of particle physics is no exception. It organizes elementary particles into three “generations.” Take quarks, for eg. The first generation includes “up” and “down” quarks, which form building blocks of atomic nuclei. Beyond these, two additional pairs exist: “charm” & “strange” quarks, as well as “top” & “bottom” quarks. Together, these six varieties are called the six (6) quark flavors. Standard Model predicts quark flavors can transmute into one another in a process called quark mixing. However, it doesn’t specify how frequently transformations occur. What could this mean? Is it a sign of physics beyond the Standard Model?

Advancements in Quark Mixing Analysis
To answer this question, UvA-IoP physicist Jordy de Vries and colleagues from Los Alamos, Seattle, and Bern have developed a new framework and performed associated calculations to very precisely determine the amount of mixing between up and down quarks, for which the effect is strongest. The work was recently published jointly in Physical Review Letters as an Editor’s Suggestion in Physical Review C.