GoKawiil
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Physicists with the STAR Collaboration, publishing in Science, report new experimental evidence that a quantity called baryon number—assigned to protons and neutrons—resides not in their constituent quarks but in gluon structures known as baryon junctions. Protons and neutrons are baryons made of three quarks, and the finding bears on how this conserved quantity is physically carried within these particles.
Mathematical physicist John Baez has published a new paper arguing that the puzzling existence of exactly three generations of quarks and leptons may emerge naturally from the exceptional Lie group E7, building on earlier work linking the Standard Model's gauge group to the exceptional Jordan algebra. The paper is his third in a series exploring whether unusual mathematical structures built from the octonions can explain quirky features of particle physics rather than treating them as accidental.
Physicists at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider II presented new analysis showing the particle X(2370) is likely a glueball, an exotic particle theorized nearly 50 years ago to be made entirely of gluons rather than quarks. The findings, detailed in a preprint shown at a physics conference in Brazil, build on 2024 work that measured the particle's mass and spin, now adding data on its decay modes and flavor-singlet structure.