ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan physicists have made significant contributions to the discovery of a new particle called the Cascade b (Xi-b) baryon while working on the D0 (D-zero) experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

This discovery serves as a road sign on a long journey to answer the question “What is the world made of?”

“My colleagues and I are delighted to have been involved with this discovery and to further confirm the extant model of particle physics in a domain where different generations of quarks combine to form a fundamental particle,” said Homer A. Neal, U-M physics professor.

The world is made from a few fundamental building blocks. These and the forces holding them together are summarized by a theory called the Standard Model of particle physics. In this theory, the building blocks consist of three generations of quarks and leptons. Physicists study these building blocks through high-energy collisions at particle accelerators.

At Fermilab, protons and anti-protons collide at the world’s highest laboratory energies in the Tevatron collider. These violent collisions occasionally produce heavy particles thanks in part to Einstein’s famous equation E = mc