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RE: A new doubly-charmed particle has been discovered at the LHC
What we know today is that this particle exists, we know its mass, and we have ideas about its width and lifetime.
The mass of the particle is 3.61 GeV/c2 (in standard units for particle masses, 1 GeV/c2 being the mass of the proton). The width is consistent with the experimental resolution we have, and the lifetime as well (we don't have enough information to get precise numbers out of that).
Note that there is no such a thing as a weight as a property of a particle. Moreover, the size is not definite as well (we are living in the quantum world here).
Always interesting the quantum world.
It's a heavy particle then.
This depends how one defines heavy. The mass of the top quark is of 173 GeV / c 2 which is much heavier. And we are expected new elementary particles to be of several of hundreds, possibly thousands, of GeV :)
173 times heavier than the proton? And there are still heavier particles?? I would expect that they should be interacting more with each other or with "normal particles" like neutrons, protons, electrons...
What is a normal particle? The name 'normal' sounds definitely weird to me :)
By the way, a neutron and a proton are not elementary particles, but are made of smaller and lighter entities named quarks. The interactions are in fact not necessarily connected to the mass of the particles (take electromagnetism for instance that is connected to the electric charge of the particles).
Great. Are quarks the smallest possible entities? How about trying to squash them into something smaller? If I where a scientist maybe I would study that at the LHC.
Quarks (and gluons) are actually being smashed into each other at the LHC, and for the moment, there is no apparent sign of any quark substructure. But studies are continuing :)