GENEVA, Switzerland, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- European researchers analyzing experiments conducted with the Large Hadron Collider say they've found evidence of the first clear observation of a new particle.
Though not the long-sought Higgs boson, dubbed the "God particle," the new particle -- given the name cb(3P) -- is also a boson and is comprised of two quarks, elemental bits of matter, held together by the same 'strong force' that holds atomic nuclei together, scientists said.
"Analyzing the billions of particle collisions at the LHC is fascinating," Andy Chisholm, a Ph.D. student from the University of Birmingham in Britain who worked on the analysis, said in a university release.
"There are potentially all kinds of interesting things buried in the data, and we were lucky to look in the right place at the right time."
"The cb(3P) is a particle that was predicted by many theorists, but was not observed at previous experiments," said James Walder, a Lancaster University research associate who worked on the analysis.
The discovery could be one step closer to uncovering the Higgs boson, researchers said.
"While people are rightly interested in the Higgs boson, which we believe gives particles their mass and may have started to reveal itself, a lot of the mass of everyday objects comes from the strong interaction we are investigating using the cb," said Roger Jones, head of the ATLAS group conducting LHC experiments.
