The letters “www” are typically followed by a “dot” — but not in this experiment.
Around 270 WWW events, trios of particles called W bosons, appeared in an experiment at the world’s largest particle collider, researchers report in the Aug. 5 Physical Review Letters. By measuring how often W boson triplets appear in such experiments, physicists can check their foundational theory of particle physics — the standard model — for any cracks.
To produce the rare boson triplets, scientists smashed protons together at the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, near Geneva. W bosons are particles that transmit the weak force, which is responsible for certain types of radioactive decay. The particles are mysterious: In April, researchers with the now-concluded CDF experiment at Fermilab in Batavia, Ill., reported that the W boson was more massive than predicted, hinting that something may be amiss with the standard model (SN: 4/7/22).
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