IF EVER a nickname was appropriate it is this one. In a race to announce the discovery of the particle dubbed the 鈥渢riple scoop鈥�, a team at Fermilab have controversially scooped some of their closest colleagues.
On 13 June, Fermilab鈥檚 DZero collaboration announced that they had found the 鈥渃ascade b baryon鈥� 鈥� containing an up, strange and bottom quark 鈥� at the Tevatron accelerator in Batavia, Illinois. Quarks fall into three families according to their mass, and cascade b is the first particle found to contain a quark from each family, hence the nickname 鈥渢riple scoop鈥�.
Finding the particle was far from easy because cascade b is short-lived, travelling only a few millimetres before decaying. The team were able to identify it from its daughter products 鈥� a hadron particle and another baryon 鈥� and so reconstructed its mass. 鈥淚t fits perfectly with predictions made by the standard model of physics,鈥� says DZero spokesman Terry Wyatt. The standard model predicts that seven more baryons remain to be discovered.
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The DZero team weren鈥檛 the only ones chasing cascade b, and their competitors at the rival CDF experiment at Fermilab believe they got there first.
At an internal Fermilab meeting on 8 June, the CDF team presented their findings to DZero, says CDF spokesman Jacobo Konigsberg. 鈥淎t that point, DZero kept the fact that they might have also found the cascade b secret,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e were surprised when they then made their announcement.鈥�
鈥淎t that point, DZero kept the fact that they might also have found the cascade b secret鈥�
However, Wyatt believes there is no question about who should be given credit for the find. On 12 June, DZero submitted a paper marking the discovery to the journal Physical Review Letters, while CDF have yet to submit theirs. 鈥淚n science, priority is established by the date a paper is submitted for publication,鈥� says Wyatt. 鈥淣eed I say more?鈥�
