A particle made of force: physicists say they’ve found mysterious ‘glueball’
This title could be clearer and more informative.Try out Clickbait Shieldfor free (5 uses left this month).
Physicists at the BESIII Collaboration in China report strong evidence that the particle X(2370), discovered in 2011, is largely composed of glueballs — clusters of gluons bound together purely by the strong force. Presented at the International Conference on High Energy Physics, the findings draw on 13 years of analysis of nearly ten billion J/ψ meson decays, including a 2024 determination of the particle's spin parity consistent with the lightest predicted glueball. Independent physicists call the cumulative evidence persuasive, though not a definitive smoking gun. Confirmation would validate a key quantum chromodynamics prediction that gluons interact with themselves and could shed light on the origin of mass.
