Measuring beauty

The LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is searching for undiscovered particles that may illuminate new truths about how nature operates at its tiniest scale. Instead of aiming to produce these new particles directly, LHCb scientists are hoping to detect the influence of "virtual" particles that pop briefly in and out of existence and influence conventional matter. Already the experiment has shown hints of odd particle behavior that cannot easily be explained by current laws of physics. More research will determine if these are the first glimpses of new lands on the particle map.