Press Pass - Surprise: Fermilab's SELEX experiment finds puzzling new particle

Mesons tend to be a short-lived tribe. Their lifetimes are so short that they show themselves as a range of masses-what particle physicists call the particle's "width." This unusual effect -- a particle's mass being uncertain because it lives a very short time -- is a direct result of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It is a vivid demonstration that these particles live in a quantum world. The meson lifetime is 10 (-24) seconds, or about the amount of time it takes light to cross a proton. By comparison, light travels one foot in a billionth of a second.

Request of the Week: Could someone please explain to me how meson's help create me?