Rare quadruplet ‘top quarks’ created at world’s largest atom smasher

By Diane Lincoln The world’s largest atom smasher has “given birth” to a set of four ultraheavy particles — called top quarks. The formation of these chubby-but-tiny quadruplets, at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, has long been predicted by the Standard Model, the prevailing physics theory that governs subatomic interactions. But new physics theories suggest …