decay, with a statistical significance exceeding six standard deviations, and the best measurement so far of its branching fraction. Furthermore, we obtained evidence for the B 0 ? m 1 m 2 decay with a statistical significance of three standard deviations. Both measurements are statistically compatible with standard model predictions and allow stringent constraints to be placed on theories beyond the standard model. The LHC experiments will resume taking data in 2015, recording proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 teraelectronvolts, which will approximately double the production rates of B 0 s and B 0 mesons and lead to further improvements in the precision of these crucial tests of the standard model.Experimental particle physicists have been testing the predictions of the standard model of particle physics (SM) with increasing precision since the 1970s. Theoretical developments have kept pace by improving the accuracy of the SM predictions as the experimental results gained in precision. In the course of the past few decades, the SM has passed critical tests derived from experiment, but it does not address some profound questions about the nature of the Universe. For example, the existence of dark matter, which has been confirmed by cosmological data 3 , is not accommodated by the SM. It also fails to explain the origin of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter, which after the Big Bang led to the survival of the tiny amount of matter currently present in the Universe Fig. 1c, is forbidden at the elementary level because the Z 0 cannot couple directly to quarks of different flavours, that is, there are no direct 'flavour changing neutral currents'. However, it is possible to respect this rule and still have this decay occur through 'higher order' transitions such as those shown in Fig. 1d and e. These are highly suppressed because each additional interaction vertex reduces their probability of occurring significantly. They are also helicity and CKM suppressed. Consequently, the branching fraction for the B 0 s ?m z m { decay is expected to be very small compared to the dominant b antiquark to c antiquark transitions. The corresponding decay of the B 0 meson, where a d quark replaces the s quark, is even more CKM suppressed because it requires a jump across two quark generations rather than just one.The branching fractions, B, of these two decays, accounting for higher-order electromagnetic and strong interaction effects, and using lattice quantum chromodynamics to compute the B 8,9 , such as in the diagrams shown in Fig. 1f and g, that can considerably modify the SM branching fractions. In particular, theories with additional Higgs bosons 10,11 predict possible enhancements to the branching fractions. A significant deviation of either of the two branching fraction measurements from the SM predictions would give insight on how the SM should be extended. Alternatively, a measurement compatible with the SM could provide strong constraints on BSM theories. . Both CMS and LHCb later ...