A nuclueus of an atom consists of nucleons. All nucleons consist of quarks and gluons. A glueball is an exotic particle, made up entirely of gluons -- the sticky particles that keep nuclear particles together. Basically a ball of gluons.
All this were hypothetical, untill now. Scientists at TU Wien predict that the meson f0(1710) has the potential of being the so called "Glueball".
Since the wide spread use of particle accelerators scientists have been looking for so-calmed "glueballs." Now it seems they have been found at last.
Glueballs are unstable and can only be detected indirectly, by analysing their not yet understood decay. Professor Anton Rebhan and Frederic Brünner from TU Wien have now employed a new theoretical approach to calculate glueball decay. Their results agree extremely well with data from particle accelerator experiments.
This is strong evidence to prove that a resonance called "f0(1710)," which has been found in various of these partical accelerator experiments, is in fact the long-sought glueball.