The Higgs boson, the particle which explains why everything in the Universe has mass, has been glimpsed by scientists, but more data is needed before the particle’s existence can be declared a certainty.
Physicists working on two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced this afternoon that their data indicates the existence of a particle with a mass of about 0.00000002kg. They believe this particle is the hitherto elusive Higgs boson.
However, there is a one in 50 chance that the signal they believe is the Higgs is merely a statistical fluke. To claim discovery of a new particle, this must be reduced to one in a million, requiring many more months’ work at the LHC under the Swiss Alps in Geneva.
Presenting the results from Atlas, one of two experiments hunting for the Higgs, Fabiola Gianotti said: “I think it’s quite remarkable that we are at this stage today.”
The LHC has two separate sets of cathedral-sized detectors searching for the Higgs, each built and run independently. Both teams’ latest results place the Higgs at the roughly the same mass, though they do not match up exactly.
The Higgs, sometimes dubbed “the God particle” to the ire of those who are searching for it, explains why particles have mass. It is a large missing piece in the jigsaw of the Standard Model, the list of sub-atomic particles that form matter. The Standard Model cannot explain either dark matter or dark energy, which combined make up 95 per cent of the Universe.
Physicists at the LHC have spent the past two years analysing the results from the world’s largest experiment, hunting for clues of the Higgs’ existence.
At the LHC, protons travelling at one billion kilometres an hour slam into each other, creating new particles that spray out onto detectors. To turn data that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting into something useful, computers trace back the path of each shard that hits the detectors, building up a picture of what occurred.
After doing this many millions of times, a smudgy picture has emerged, which suggests that the Higgs exists and weighs about the same as ten grains of sand, but more collisions need to be examined to sharpen the image.
According to the theory suggested in 1964 by Peter Higgs, then a professor of physics at Edinburgh University, other particles travel through and interact with a field of Higgs bosons, which slows the particles down and gives rise to their mass.
In 1993 the then science minister, Lord Waldegrave, staged a competition for the best explanation of the Higgs field. The winning analogy was of Margaret Thatcher – a massive particle – wandering through a Tory cocktail party and gathering hangers-on as she went.
Photo by greenuk via Flickr
Remember when nuclear fusion was just years away? I think that was like 50 years ago.
Maybe the Higg's Boson is like that - just around the corner but we need another gazillion dollars to find it.
Maybe it's not there like Ptolemy's epicycles were not there.
Maybe the real problem is that there's a big hole in Relativity
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