Discovery of a new particle: A Charming Tetraquark
Publisher
Global Views 360
Publication Date
July 17, 2020
URL
The Large Hadron Collider | Source: Anna Pantelia via CERN
While the world is horrified by the novel Coronavirus, scientists at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced the discovery of a never seen before tetraquark. Any finding in particle physics is a phenomenal one because it could tell us a lot about the origins of the universe and how everything came to be. And this discovery is quite charming and quarky (quirky).
Quarks are the elementary particles so any further division of these particles is not possible. This means everything in the universe is ultimately a combination of Quarks. Any new discovery of Quarks therefore increase our understanding about the origin of universe
When three Quarks come together, they form familiar particles known as Baryons, for instance, protons and neutrons, found in the nucleus of an atom. A tetraquark, in particle physics, is an exotic meson composed of four quarks.
Murray Gell-Mann, recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of Elementary particles, chose the name ‘Quark’. Another scientist, George Zweig from CERN also proposed the Quark theory independently of Gell-Mann.
All the new particles are detected using particle accelerators where particles are accelerated at almost the speed of light and collide to look into their subsets. It is like knocking two rocks together so that they break into smaller constituents.
The most recent tetraquark, named X (6900) was discovered by CERN physicists while working on LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment). The already known tetraquarks contain a particular combination of two relatively heavy quarks and two light Quarks. On the other hand X(6900) consists of four heavy Quarks: two Quarks and two anti-Quarks.
This exclusive particle made of unusual combinations is a perfect setting for understanding the fundamental force of nature known as Strong Interaction. The strong force is vital to comprehend as it binds together protons, neutrons and the nucleus that ultimately make up matter. Another perk of X(6900) is its relatively heavy mass, so these are simpler to look at and are more stable as compared to notoriously fast moving-lighter ones.
The paper written by 800 scientists is yet to be peer-reviewed. The bump observed has a statistical significance of more than five sigma (standard deviations) that is good enough to claim the discovery of a new particle.
In any scenario, this unusual discovery will serve as a piece for completing the puzzle of our universe while serving as evidence of the presence of new particles not yet found.
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Bhagat Singh is one of the ‘big names’ immortalised in the history of India’s freedom struggle and eternally cherished even after almost ninety years of his martyrdom. What makes him stand out is his popularity among the masses being almost on par with the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, despite his beliefs and actions being diametrically opposite to theirs.
Of the freedom fighters who remain mainstream in today’s India— a crowd predominantly made up of politicians with center or right of centre leanings, Bhagat Singh occupies a relatively lonely spot as a young, staunchly left-wing revolutionary who outrightly rejected Gandhi’s philosophy, and preferred direct action over politics.
Newspaper headline after Central Legislative Assembly non-lethal bombing
Bhagat Singh is most commonly and widely remembered in association with an incident where he, along with his friend and comrade B.K. Dutt dropped non-lethal smoke bombs into the Central Legislative Assembly from its balcony in 1929. They also scattered leaflets by the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), which he was a major part of and was aided by in orchestrating the bombings. He is said to have been inspired by French anarchist Auguste Vaillant, who had bombed the Chamber of Deputies in Paris in 1893.
The bombing gathered widespread negative reaction due to the use of violence, especially from those who supported the Gandhian method. While Bhagat Singh and the HSRA wanted to protest exploitative legislatures such as the Public Safety Act and the Trades Disputes Bill, it is also widely accepted that they additionally intended to use the drama and public attention of the ensuing trial to garner attention to socialist and communist causes. Bhagat Singh and Dutt did not escape under the cover of panic and smoke despite the former carrying a pistol, and waited for the police to find and arrest them. During the trial Bhagat Singh frequently chanted a variety of slogans, such as ‘Inquilab Zindabad,’ which is even today often raised in protests across India.
March 25th Newspaper carrying the news about execution of Bhagat Singh | Source: Tribune India
However, this was not the trial that ended in Bhagat Singh receiving his execution sentence. Before the Assembly bombings, Bhagat Singh had been involved in the shooting of police officer John Saunders, in connection to the death of freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai. At that time he and his associates had escaped, but after Bhagat Singh was awarded a life sentence for the Assembly bombing, a series of investigations led to his rearrest as part of the Saunders murder case. It was this trial— generally regarded as unjust— that led to his much protested execution sentence.
Bhagat Singh was hanged to death on the eve of March 23rd, 1931 and he was just twenty-three years old.
Despite the criticism he received for his actions, his execution sentence was widely opposed and many attempts were made to challenge it. In fact, his execution came on the eve of the Congress party’s annual convention, as protests against it worsened. He was memorialised nationwide as a martyr, and is often addressed with the honorific Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh.
Apart from being a socialist, Bhagat Singh was attracted to communist and anarchist causes as well. In ‘To Young Political Workers,’ his last testament before his death, he called for a “socialist order” and a reconstruction of society on a “new, i.e, Marxist basis.” He considered the government “a weapon in the hand of the ruling class”, which is reflected in his belief that Gandhian philosophy only meant the “replacement of one set of exploiters for another.” Additionally, he wrote a series of articles on anarchism, wanting to fight against mainstream miscontrusions of the word and explain his interest in anarchist ideology.
Bipin Chandra, who wrote the introduction to Why I am an Atheist by Bhagat Singh | Source: Wikimedia
“Bhagat Singh was not only one of India’s greatest freedom fighters and revolutionary socialists, but also one of its early Marxist thinkers and ideologues. Unfortunately, this last aspect is relatively unknown with the result that all sorts of reactionaries, obscurantists and communalists have been wrongly and dishonestly trying to utilise for their own politics and ideologies the name and fame of Bhagat Singh and his comrades such as Chandra Shekhar Azad.”
Bhagat Singh is often admired and celebrated for his dedication to the cause of liberation. However his socialist, communist and anarchist beliefs were suppressed by the successive governments in Independent India. This in a way is the suppression of a revolutionary who has the potential to inspire, unite and motivate the growing population of a spectrum of activists all over India, in direct response to the fast-spreading divisiveness and intolerance in the country, often patronised by the groups and organizations professing the right-wing fascist ideology.
Bhagat Singh’s dreams of a new social order live on, not just in his writings, but also reflected in the hearts of every activist, protester, and dissenting citizen. The fight for freedom, revolution, Inquilab, may have changed in meaning, but itis far from over.
