Scientists Just Discovered an Impossible Particle

Understanding the ins and outs of the subatomic world is a confusing process, but there are moments of surprising simplicity. For example, all fundamental particles (that we know of) can be naturally divided into two categories: fermions and bosons. Fermions contain all the particles of matter (i.e. quarks and leptons) and are characterized by their half-integer spin values whereas bosons are all force carriers—gluons, w and z bosons, photons, and of course, the Higgs boson—and have spin values in whole integers, so 0 or 1 (or possibly 2 if gravitons exist).

These different properties mean fermions and bosons also behave differently. Don Lincon, a senior scientist at the U.S. particle physics laboratory Fermilab, describes bosons as "puppies of the subatomic world" because you can have an unlimited number of bosons in the same place at the same time. This is why lasers exist, for example. However, fermions are standoffish (or "subatomic cats," according to Lincoln) because two fermions cannot be in the same place at the same time due to the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two electrons (each with opposite spins) can occupy the same atomic orbital.

In other words, particles in between these two states shouldn't exist, but a new mathematical study from two scientists from Rice University in Texas and Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany suggests otherwise. By using advanced mathematical techniques, the researchers found that these "paraparticles" could theoretically exist within the known confines of physics. The results of this study were published in the journal Nature.

"This is cross-disciplinary research that involves several areas of theoretical physics and mathematics," Max Planck Institute,'s Zhiyuan Wang, a former postdoctoral student at Rice University and study co-author, said in a press statement.

Mathematically proving the existence of paraparticles, the existence of which has been debated for 70 years, wasn't an easy task. The duo relied on advanced mathematics, such as Lie algebra, Hopf algebra, and representation theory to create mathematical models of dense matter systems, and found that these hypothetical paraparticles in one and two dimensions behaved differently from fermions and bosons when they exchanged their positions, allowing a certain number of particles to congregate rather than just one (fermions) or infinitely many (bosons).

"Our paper proves, for the first time, that there is actually something beyond fermions and bosons," Wang told New Scientist.

Although this new mathematical description is a huge breakthrough, its impact is still unknown, and Rice University co-author Kaden Hazzard even says he doesn't know exactly where this research will lead, but "I know it will be exciting to find out." So far, the research doesn't hypothetically show evidence for the existence of paraparticles in the third dimension (though it doesn't rule it out either) and how likely these hypothetical paraparticles occur in nature is currently unknown.

As New Scientist notes, these paraparticles are actually quasiparticles, which emerge from strong interactions between particles, and are not fundamental particles themselves. However, the discovery of the quasiparticle known as anyons could prove vital for developing future quantum computers, so the further exploration of these paraparticles could lead science into new areas previously believed to be impossible.

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