While physicists can state that to an extent we can understand the way things work in the universe, everything changes when we turn our gaze to subatomic laws. Recently, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) found at CERN in Switzerland may have just discovered a new particle that changes even the little we knew about the state of affairs at subatomic level.

So far, the particle in question is far from confirmed, and researchers need to run extensive testing in order to do so. If, however, the particle will be confirmed, it would probably mean that scientists need to recreate an entirely new standard model to use in order to truly understand the workings of our universe.

The current standard model represents a series of theories that scientists have iterated regarding everything we know – or like to believe we know when in fact it’s mostly theorizing based on mathematical models – about subatomic level physics. However, change any of the parameters that the standard model works according to, and we would see our knowledge crumbling. And there are already certain principles of nature itself that still baffle us.

And that constitutes one of the most limiting flaws of the standard model too. For example, despite superhuman efforts to explain the most fundamental force in our universe, the gravity, the elusive particles that scientists have named gravitons have yet to be discovered. The theory that researchers have applied within the standard model works fine and seems to be accurate, except it does not account for gravity whatsoever.

The particle that was discovered at the LHC has been named B meson and behaved in ways entirely different to what was expected by scientists before they set out to study it. According to previous research based on data gathered between 2011 and 2012, B meson should decay at certain frequencies and angles. Instead, running the practical tests at the particle collider did not go according to what the researchers had predicted. Neither the frequencies nor the angles were right during decay, as they varied a whole lot more than previously expected.

The B meson is a particle that is made of a bottom antiquark and an up, down, strange or charm quark. Displaying unusually short lifespans, this particle is vital for understanding and studying quantum chromodynamics. Scientists believe that by studying how far off the standard model these particles can go, they can set limits on new particles and maybe gather a better understanding of how the subatomic universe works.

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