Credit: Image courtesy of Jefferson Lab
Researchers added extra energy to the proton to produce a pair of quarks, which then yielded new particles. In this illustration, a strange/anti-strange quark pair (s and แนก) yields a Lambda (^) hyperon and Kaon (K+ meson). The researchers found that strange/anti-strange quark pairs were produced about one-third as often as pairs of up/anti-up (u) and down/anti-down (d) quarks.