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Mars Base

'God particle' discovery poses Nobel dilemma - 0 views

  • But whether the July 4 fireworks will unlock the great prize is unclear.
  • cautious, given that the new particle has not yet been officially sealed as the Higgs.
  • almost certain it is the coveted beast
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  • y still need to confirm this
  • s further work to see how it behaves and reacts with other particles
  • there is a remote possibility that the new particle is not the Higgs, although this would be an even more groundshaking announcement.
  • six physicists, each building on the work of others, published a flurry of papers on aspects of the theory within four months of each other back in 1964.
  • The first were Belgians Robert Brout, who died last year, and Francois Englert.
  • followed by Higgs, who was the first to say only a new particle would explain the anomalies of mass
  • further complication is that thousands of physicists worked in the two labs at CERN's Large Hadron Collider near Geneva where Higgs experiments were conducted independently of each other.
  • decide whether theoreticians or experimentalists—or both—should get the glory.
  • At most three names, although they can include organisations, can share a Nobel
  • e prize cannot be given posthumously.
  • The Nobel will "eventually" go to the Higgs
  • s not yet certain that the newly-discovered particle is in fact a Higgs boson
  • nothing stopping us from giving the prize to an organisation. But it has not been the custom in the scientific prizes
  • The Nobel Peace Prize has often been awarded to organisations. But in the science prizes we have tried to find the most prizeworthy individuals
Mars Base

LHC Experiment Yields No Insight into Post-Higgs Physics | Observations, Scientific Ame... - 0 views

  • the Standard Model has survived another test
  • the new data limit the possibilities for many hypothesized extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics, including the concept of supersymmetry
  • observed a new kind of particle behavior
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  • supersymmetry—the proposal that every elementary particle has a heavier, as-yet-unseen cousin
  • The LHC has yet to find any evidence for supersymmetric particles of any kind
  • Supersymmetry is not ruled out by our measurement, but it is strongly constrained
  • only certain flavors of supersymmetry jibe with the new data
  • Failure to find one variant of a theory is not evidence against other variants,”
  • If you’re looking for your lost keys, failing to find them in the kitchen, living room and bedroom is not evidence against their being somewhere else in the house
  • ry rare decay of a strange beauty particle
  • into two particles called muons. (A muon is a charged particle akin to a heavyweight electron
  • The rarity of the decay makes it difficult to observe
  • the reigning theory of subatomic particles and forces, the Standard Model of particle physics, predicts just how often the effect should occur
  • The LHCb data (pdf) match up well with the Standard Model predictions
Mars Base

Particle looking 'more and more' like Higgs, LHC scientists say - 0 views

  • in the latest update, physicists told a conference in La Thuile, Italy, that more analysis is needed before a definitive statement can be made
  • Key to a positive identification of the particle is a detailed analysis of its properties and how it interacts with other particles
  • Since scientists' announcement last July that they had found a particle likely to be the Higgs, much data has been analysed, and its properties are becoming clearer
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  • One property that will allow several teams researching the particle to declare whether or not it is a Higgs, is called spin
  • A Higgs must have spin-zero
  • All the analysis conducted so far strongly indicates spin-zero, but it is not yet able to rule out entirely the possibility that the particle has spin-two
  • Until we can confidently tie down the particle's spin, the particle will remain Higgs-like
  • looking "more and more"
Mars Base

CMS, ATLAS experiments report Higgs-like particle close to the 7 sigma level - 0 views

  • t much further analysis is needed to reveal the full details of its identity
  • The next update is scheduled for the spring 2013 conferences
  • for the final word before the LHC resumes running in 2015, we'll probably have to wait some time longer.
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  • The latest research findings from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN show that the CMS and ATLAS experiments are now reporting that the significance of their observation of the Higgs-like particle is standing close to the 7 sigma level, well beyond the 5 required for a discovery, and that the new particle's properties appear to be consistent with those of a Standard Model Higgs boson.
Mars Base

After Higgs Boson, scientists prepare for next quantum leap - 0 views

  • Seven months after its scientists made a landmark discovery that may explain the mysteries of mass, Europe's top physics lab will take a break from smashing invisible particles to recharge for the next leap
  • From Thursday, the cutting-edge facilities at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) will begin winding down, then go offline on Saturday for an 18-month upgrade
  • scientists said they were 99.9 percent certain they had found the elusive Higgs Boson,
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  • The upgrade will boost the LHC's energy capacity, essential for CERN to confirm definitively that its boson is the Higgs, and allow it to probe new dimensions such as supersymmetry and dark matter
  • We need to increase the energy to look at more physics.
  • Over the past three years, CERN has slammed protons together more than six million billion times
  • espite the shutdown, CERN's researchers won't be taking a breather, as they must trawl through a vast mound of data
  • think a year from now, we'll have more information on the data accumulated over the past three years
  • Last year, the LHC achieved a collision energy level of eight teraelectron volts, an energy measure used in particle physics—up from seven in 2011
  • After it comes back online in 2015, the goal is to take that level to 13 or even 14, with the LHC expected to run for three or four years before another shutdown.
Mars Base

Physicists On Alert For Higgs Announcement - Science News - 0 views

  • Rumors of an impending Very Important Higgs Announcement
  • The two teams searching for the elusive particle at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, are keeping quiet.
  • people work day and night including weekends to reach a scientifically validated result
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  • is morphing almost constantly
  • A Higgs produced from the energy of the colliding protons remains intact for so short a time that it can’t be observed direct
  • Instead, scientists infer its presence from the rubble produced when it falls apart
  • The Higgs boson *does* give particles mass
Mars Base

Physicists Bet They're Homing In On Higgs - Science News - 0 views

  • Fermilab’s data come from its now-shuttered Tevatron collider
  • Between 2001 and 2011
  • it gathered data on 500 trillion such collisions
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  • If the Higgs is found, the question turns to whether its properties match predictions made by the standard model, or whether they are slightly different
  • How long it will take, though, remains a mystery. “I can tell you 2012 is the year” to learn if the Higgs exists or not, says Tom LeCompte of Argonne National Laboratory. “I can’t tell you July is the month.”
Mars Base

Understanding what's up with the Higgs boson - 0 views

  • CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson
Mars Base

More clues soon in hunt for Higgs particle - 0 views

  • On Monday, scientists working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in the midwestern US state of Illinois will announce their latest Higgs search results based on data from Tevatron experiments there.
  • The Tevatron
  • closed down last year, but physicists have continued to scrutinize its data in the hunt for the Higgs.
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  • physicists have double the data they had last year
Mars Base

Peter Higgs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Peter Ware Higgs, FRS, FRSE, FKC
  • British theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh
  • so-called Higgs mechanism, which was proposed by several physicists besides Higgs at about the same time, predicts the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson (often described as "the most sought-after particle in modern physics
Mars Base

New Particle at World's Largest Atom Smasher is Likely Higgs Boson | LHC | Space.com - 0 views

  • Physicists are more than 99 percent sure that they've found a new elementary particle that is likely the long-sought Higgs boson.
  • they'd seen a particle weighing roughly 125 times the mass of the proton
  • it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found
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  • The Higgs
  • is thought to hold the key to one of the mysteries of the universe: Why do things have mass?
  • statistics reach a level called 5 sigma, meaning that there is only a one in 3.5 million chance the signal isn't real.
  • data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV
  • GeV stands for gigaelecton volts
  • Today's findings come from the two general-purpose experiments at LHC, ATLAS and CMS. Both observed particle collisions independently and analyzed their observations separately
  • scientists from each team were not allowed to tell each other what they found until today, for fear their results would bias the other experiment's researchers toward looking for the same results.
Mars Base

Higgs-like Particle Discovered at CERN - 0 views

  • According to the theory, a particle acquires mass through its interaction with the Higgs field, which is believed to pervade all of space and has been compared to molasses that sticks to any particle rolling through it.
  • the Higgs would be responsible for how particles come together to form matter, and without it, the universe would have remained a formless miss-mash of particles shooting around at the speed of light.
Mars Base

At Long Last, Physicists Discover Famed Higgs Boson - ScienceNOW - 0 views

  • Both the CMS (top) and the ATLAS (bottom) detectors see evidence of the Higgs boson decaying into a pair of photons in the form of a peak in a so-called mass plot. The agreement of the two peaks and other data clinch the discovery of the Higgs.
  • CMS detector see clear signs of the Higgs decaying into two photons
  • From the energies of the two photons, physicists can infer the mass of their supposed parent particle
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  • peak atop a background produced by random photon pairs
  • signals the presence of a Higgs-like particle with a mass of 125 giga-electron volts (GeV) or about 133 times the mass of the proton
  • CMS researchers also see evidence of the Higgs decaying to a pair of particles called W bosons or a pair of particles called Z bosons
  • ATLAS team sees a similar peak in the mass plot for Higgses decaying into photon pairs
  • ATLAS researchers also see the Higgs decaying into Z bosons and other combinations of particles
  • Taken together, ATLAS's signals just meet the 5 sigma standard of discovery, Gianotti reported, earning immediate applause
  • in 1970, theorists predicted the existence of a particle called the charm quark; two experimenters independently discovered the particle in 1974, for which they received the Nobel Prize in physics 2 years later
  • In 1968, theorists predicted the existence of the W and Z bosons; in 1983, those particles were also discovered
  • won the Nobel Prize in
  • won it in 1984
  • Physicists say that conceptual holes in the standard model strongly suggest that the theory is incomplete
  • in the standard model interactions between the Higgs and the other particles ought to force the mass of the Higgs to skyrocket to a value a trillion times larger
  • that doesn't happen
  • most physicists suspect there are new particles out there that somehow counteract ballooning of the Higgs mass.
  • But will such particles have low enough masses to be discovered with any conceivable human-made atom smasher? "There's absolutely no guarantee,"
  • Peter Higgs
Mars Base

CERN physicists report strong evidence of Higgs boson (w/ live video from CERN) - 0 views

  • Joe Incandela, leader of one of the teams known as CMS, told scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, that his team of 2,100 scientists has "observed" a new particle that is a boson
  • data as consistent with the elusive Higgs boson
  • stopped short of definitively declaring discovery of the Higgs boson.
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  • they have discovered a new particle that is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson
  • which is believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape
  • We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV
  • it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found
  • A more complete picture of today’s observations will emerge later this year after the LHC provides the experiments with more data.
  • The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle
  • LHC will continue running until the end of this year, and is expected to deliver twice as much data as we have so far
  • After that, it will be upgraded, and will be able to run at higher energy, which will help with the measurements.
  • . In the Standard Model (the simplest theory which describes the fundamental subatomic particles and the forces between them) it is hypothesized that there is only one Higgs Boson
  • in the Supersymmetric Model (which, unlike the Standard Model, incorporates the physics of dark energy and the full theory of gravitation) there could be up to five Higgs Boson
  • how will they know if it is one of many?
  • detailed decay properties of a supersymmetric Higgs Boson are different from those of the Standard Model version. Therefore, with sufficiently precise data we will be able to tell the difference
  • Supersymmetry is an extension of the Standard Model, rather than a replacement
  • The Standard Model will always remain as an excellent description of Nature at energies below those explored at the LHC
  • similar to the way in which Einstein’s General Relativity is the best description of very strong gravitational fields, but Newton’s gravity works perfectly well for almost all normal situations.
Mars Base

Quantum Diaries - 0 views

  • All theorists today agree that our current theoretical model has its limits
  • the Standard Model
  • has more than 100 free parameters, making it impossible to obtain predictions without assigning fixed values to some of these parameters
Mars Base

CERN - Glossary - 0 views

  • Boson The collective name given to the particles that carry forces between particles of matter
  • Higgs boson A particle predicted by theory. It is linked with the mechanism by which physicists think particles acquire mass.
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