Can someone explain this in laymens terms? I don’t know what Pentaquarks or tetraquarks or whatever else this stuff mean. And what does this change about what we know about physics or sub atomic particles etc?
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most stuff is made out of what we call atoms.
those in turn are made up of neutrons, protons and electrons.
neutrons and protons themselves are made up of quarks.
unlike the other, bigger “thingies”, quarks cant be found separately. basically they always appear in pairs or groups of three. when you try to separate them, you need to pump so much energy into them that you create new ones (that combine with the ones you have in pairs or groups of three).
well, now they’ve found that with enough power you can get groups of 4 or even 5 quarks to form an extremely shortlived kind of “cousin” of protons and neutrons.
those wont exist for more than the millionst part of a second (usually much less), so the immediate impact on our world is small.
HOWEVER this allows us to refine our models and our predictions and since there’s often “symmetries” it might lead to other discoveries.
The odds are that this will essentially “only” further our basic understanding of the universe, but there’s a fraction of a percent chance that it will also directly or indirectly lead to some crazy tech or power source (very unlikely though!)
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