PhysOrg excerpt below, paper is here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.2304v1
An incredibly rare sub-atomic particle decay might not be quite as rare as previously predicted, say Cornell researchers. This discovery, culled from a vast data set at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), is a clue for physicists trying to catch glimpses of how the universe began. "The work, which is generating buzz because of its possible implications for the existence of new physics, has been submitted to Physical Review Letters by an international team of scientists, among them Julia Thom-Levy, Cornell assistant professor of physics, and graduate student Walter Hopkins. The paper is available on arXiv. Thom-Levy studies the decay of particles formed in high-energy collisions, with particular focus on a class of particles called strange B-mesons that consist of a beauty quark bound to a strange quark. The Standard Model of Physics predicts the rate of strange B-mesons decaying into a pair of oppositely charged muons as exceedingly rare, with only a few decays out of 350 trillion collisions expected. In the new data from Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator, the researchers found four of these decays for every one expected. While the upward fluctuation could be a statistical fluke, it is attracting widespread attention in the field because it might possibly indicate the presence of new particles and lead to an entirely new model of physics." -Mark
