Scientists Say They've Discovered a New ParticleFor over 50 years, the pentaquark was only theoretical.

It's been a big week for scientific achievement with regard to some of the (relatively) smaller elements of our universe.

While NASA's historic flyby of dwarf planet Pluto has us looking to stars, adiscoverymade this week by the scientists working with欧洲核子研究中心's (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) Large Hadron Collider -- the biggest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world -- expands what we know about the building blocks of the world around us.

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For those of us who may have blocked out high school chemistry or physics,quarksare the particles of matter that pair up to construct protons and neutrons in atoms. The newly discovered particles are calledpentaquarksand they have been purely theoretical for a little over 50 years. Pentaquarks consist of five quarks – four normal quarks and one antiquark.

American physicist Murray Gell-Manncoinedthe term in 1964, and was awarded the Noble Prize in 1969 for his work. In areleasefrom CERN, spokesperson Guy Wilkinson explained why the discovery is so special.

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"It represents a way to aggregate quarks, namely the fundamental constituents of ordinary protons and neutrons, in a pattern that has never been observed before in over fifty years of experimental searches. Studying its properties may allow us to understand better how ordinary matter, the protons and neutrons from which we're all made, is constituted," said Wilkinson.

现在的计划是研究四夸克和one antiquark work together to make up these pentaquarks. And with that, our world gets bigger because of something so incredibly small.

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