For 50 years, the research community has been hunting unsuccessfully for the so-called Odderon particle. Now, a Swedish-Hungarian research group has discovered the mythical particle with the help of extensive analysis of experimental data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.

In 1973, two French particle physicists found that, according to their calculations, there was a previously unknown quasi-particle. The discovery sparked an international hunt.

The Odderon particle is what briefly forms when protons collide in high-energy collisions, and in some cases do not shatter, but bounce off one another and scatter. Protons are made up of quarks and gluons, that briefly form Odderon and Pomeron particles.