The quark-based particles we're most familiar with, the proton and neutron, are composed of three of the lightest quarks bound tightly together via gluons.

We've also discovered heavier versions of these familiar particles, where one of the up or down quarks is replaced by a heavier quark, like a strange or bottom.

In addition, there is a large collection of unstable particles, collectively called mesons, that involve two quarks of various masses, also held together by gluons.

In one case, the new high-quark-count particles are made the same way that familiar ones are: gluons bind them tightly together into a single particle.

An alternative, however, is that the large number of quarks comes about because two more familiar particles are tightly associated.

These high-quark-count particles tend to decay extremely rapidly to familiar particles, and it's generally only the decay of those latter particles that we can track.

And the new particle has a lot of heavier quarks.

So far, all the high-quark-count particles we've found have been a mix of mostly lighter up and down quarks, with a couple of their heavier peers thrown in.

Charm quarks are from the middle generation of quarks; charm and strange are heavier than up or down but far lighter than top or bottom.

(Two groups found this particle at roughly the same time and, in a rare moment of compromise, the names given to it by both of them have stuck.) Since we know how J/ψ particles decay, we can simply look for pairs of decays coming out of a single proton-proton collision.

(Muons can be thought of as heavier, unstable cousins of the electron.) Since there should be two of the J/ψ particles, then we need to look for two pairs of muon tracks in the aftermath of a collision?

And, given that the specific quark is called "charm," its existence opens vast possibilities for puns‐and that's without even getting into the fact that the technical term for the full family of particles containing these quarks is "charmonium.".

We don't know if it's simply two J/ψ particles in tight association or whether there's a single particle composed of four charm quarks.