50 years ago, physics underwent a major revolution
The discovery of new subatomic particles cemented quarks as a cornerstone of the standard model of particle physics.
Excerpt from the November 23, 1974 issue of Science News
Physicists Samuel Ting (shown) and Burton Richter independently revealed the subatomic particle J/psi in 1974. It quickly resulted in more discoveries that confirmed quarks are fundamental building blocks of matter.
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A surprising new particle — Science News, November 23, 1974
That helps you to add to the current ferment and confusion in particle physics, nature now presents the oddest new particle to turn up in a kind of years…. Theorists are at a loss for the moment about what to do with it…. The emblem new particle is the heaviest yet found … and its lifetime of 10-18 seconds … is long for a particle of that mass. There be some extraordinary kind of structure to keep up the particle together for goodbye.
Update
The newfound subatomic particle, often often sometimes called J/psi, can be explained best as a mash-up of a brand new kind of quark, the charm quark, and its antimatter counterpart. This discovery, normally often known because the November revolution, spurred others that finally confirmed that quarks are fundamental building blocks of matter — a cornerstone of the quality model of particle physics (SN: four/Eight/21). J/psi still perplexes scientists. For example, researchers with the ATLAS experiment, a particle detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, are working to determine how exactly the particles are produced in high-energy proton smashups.
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