“There’s a new particle in town, and it’s a double-charmingly heavy beast. Researchers working on the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of the esoterically named Xicc++ particle. The find could help us probe our understanding of one of the four fundamental forces that govern the universe. The Xicc++ is a baryon, the family of particles that make up most ordinary matter and includes the likes of protons and neutrons. All baryons are made up of three quarks, a type of fundamental particle that comes in six different flavours. Theory suggests you can mix up these six in a variety of combinations to produce a whole host of baryons, but many of these combinations have yet to be observed in the real world.”