Introducing the Tetraquark

Though the Higgs boson has garnered the biggest headlines, more groundbreaking particle physics results are coming out of the Large Hadron Collider. Among the most impressive of these findings is compelling experimental evidence for the existence of a whole new class of matter particle, called a tetraquark. As the name suggests, this composite particle is created by four quarks (actually, two quarks and two anti-quarks). The evidence is strong, but further research is needed to understand how it works, since it seems to decay much more quickly than would be expected by other evidence and theoretical predictions.