Chinese researchers say they have confirmed the existence of the glueball, a long-theorised form of matter predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.
The discovery was made by the Chinese-led international collaboration behind the Beijing Spectrometer III (BESIII) experiment at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider, according to the Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Scientists first detected the particle known as X(2370) in 2011. Follow-up studies, including measurements completed in 2024, indicated that its properties matched those predicted for a glueball.
Strongest evidence yet
In the latest research, the team identified multiple new decay modes and confirmed the particle's key "flavour-singlet" characteristic, providing what researchers described as the strongest evidence yet that X(2370) is predominantly a glueball.
The Standard Model predicts that gluons — the particles responsible for binding quarks together inside protons and neutrons — can also bind to one another to form glueballs.
Researchers said the findings represent the clearest experimental evidence in nearly five decades of efforts to identify the elusive particles.
