BROOKHAVEN, LONG ISLAND, N.Y., March 25 (UPI) -- U.S. particle physicists said Thursday they have seen a rare happening that could force a rethink of current theories of sub-atomic matter.
After watching more than 7 trillion disintegrations of a particle called a kaon, the scientists, from Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., said they have seen three peculiar events when they expected to see just one.
The kaon or K-meson can decay in a particle accelerator in a number of ways. One involves it turning into a charged pion particle, a neutrino, and an anti-neutrino. The physicists said they regard this decay pattern as especially interesting because it may reveal new effects not accounted for in the so-called Standard Model, which currently comprises 16 particles that make up all matter.
The Standard Model predicted the event witnessed by the scientists should occur only once in every 13 billion decays.
The new result now suggests the rare event could occur once in every 7 billion decays -- almost twice the rate predicted by the Standard Model.
