Pentaquark Quest Quickens Particle Physics

摘要

The structure of matter at the very deepest level remains a frontier of physics research, just as exciting and challenging in its own way as the cosmologists' quest to unwrap the structure of the universe. The Physics Top Ten this period has three papers (#3, #7, #10) claiming sight of pentaquarks, a new class of elementary particle. This is the most exciting discovery in nuclear physics for at least a decade. About a dozen groups of experimenters are working to confirm (or refute) the existence of pentaquark baryons. The particle physics community is divided on the issue, and a lively debate is fueling the citation rates.