Scientists at CERN have found evidence of an extraordinarily rare particle decay, offering a glimpse into a largely unexplored world known as the ‘zeptoverse’.
The discovery was made using the Large Hadron Collider, which smashes protons together to produce particles that scientists can study.
Researchers focused on beauty particles, short-lived particles created in these collisions. They found evidence of an extremely rare process in which one of these particles transforms into other particles, something predicted to happen just once in every 10 billion cases.
This incredibly small scale is what scientists call the ‘zeptoverse’: an unexplored frontier of the subatomic world, where researchers hope to discover new fundamental particles.
Scientists believe exploring this tiny world could also help answer some of the biggest questions in physics, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which together account for around 95% of the universe.