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The Standard Model predicts particles known as beauty quarks (bottom quarks) equally decay into electrons and the heavier muon particles.
Dr Cliff said: “Beauty quarks are unstable, living on average just for about 1.5 trillionths of a second before decaying into other particles.
“The way beauty quarks decay can be strongly influenced by the existence of other fundamental particles or forces.
“When a beauty quark decays, it transforms into a set of lighter particles, such as electrons, through the influence of the weak force.”
But the LHCb experiment at The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) appears to have found an irregularity in this decay, with the beauty quarks decaying into other particles, possibly as a result of an unknown external force.
The LHCb is one of the four colossal experiments stationed along the LHC’s circular tunnel, where physicists collide particles at near the speed of light to break them down to their constituent parts.
The March paper found beauty quarks detected at the LHCb were decaying into electrons and muons at different rates.
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