Image: Benjamin Simon and Dirk Schuster
In Brief
The Higgs boson, the last missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics, had for many decades eluded physicists' increasingly elaborate efforts to detect its presence.
Two giant experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider had found tantalizing hints of the Higgs in late 2011. At that time, physicists hoped that the spring 2012 run would lead to a discovery.
Physicists hid the data from the spring run from even themselves, “blinding” their analyses so as to not introduce bias. In mid-June they took the first look at the new evidence.
The “Higgs-like” particle that emerged has many of the properties that physicists were looking for. It also held some early surprises that could point the way to the future of physics.
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Late on the evening of June 14, 2012, groups of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers working on the Large Hadron Collider began peering into a just opened data cache. This huge machine at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, had been producing tremendous amounts of data in the months since it awoke from its winter-long slumber. But the more than 6,000 physicists who work on the LHC's two largest experiments were wary of unintentionally adding biases to their analysis. They had agreed to remain completely unaware of the results—performing what are called “blind” analyses—until mid-June, when all would suddenly be revealed in a frenzy of nocturnal activity.
Many of the young scientists worked through that night to untangle the newly freed threads of evidence. Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple experiments, only the two largest ones—ATLAS and CMS—had been tasked with finding the Higgs boson, the long-sought particle that would complete the Standard Model of particle physics, the theoretical description of the subatomic world. Each massive detector records the subatomic debris spewing relentlessly from proton collisions in its midst; a detailed, independent accounting of these remnants can reveal fleeting new phenomena, including perhaps the elusive Higgs boson. Yet the detectors have to sift through the particle tracks and energy deposits while enduring a steady siege of low-energy background particles that threaten to swamp potentially interesting signals. It is like drinking from a fire hose while trying to ferret out a few tiny grains of gold with your teeth.
This article was originally published with the title The Higgs at Last.
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10 Comments
Add CommentThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC) costing billions of dollars has produced much theory advancing human understanding of the deepest laws of nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Voigt Experiment (magnet, bread and butter knife and 1/8 ball bearing) costing five dollars and thirty seven cents has solved the deepest laws of nature.
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=11418&st=15
Does anyone know where I could score those particle patches in the photo?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Mr. Vogel
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot sure on your meaning but this may help.
Starting with the hexagon image, all cells of life comprises three nuclei orbits. Individually particles spiral away from the orbit producing two poles or the six points.
Cell division is when orbit speed pulls the poles apart and the nuclei of the pole centre to the mass creating a new cell maintaining the complete genetic make up of the entity.
Or more simply:
HONEYCOMB
By chewing pollen the bee produces a glob of wax. Immediately after the placement, the saliva or water of the glob interacts in repelling the wax away from the glob's nucleus.
The wax takes on the shape produced from the three nuclei orbits of the water nucleus. What is called evaporation leaves an empty six pole or six sided wax structure.
or
THE SNOW FLAKE
An information cell (info cell) excreting from a life form of Earth (AURA) interacts with the force centrifugal, and is taken aloft. In its mutation or evolution it becomes a size to interact with the force gravity, (forces of equal evolution act upon forces of equal evolution). This determines the uniformity and elevation as these gas 'info cells' interact with the temperature cold producing water (cloud).
Each water droplet has is own info cell (nucleus) producing its own aura. In the case of cold temperature (freezing) the orbits of nuclei of the nucleus go into a chaotic state and instead of harmony or attraction, they are running into each other repelling. This causes the nucleus of the rain drop to literally unfold itself crystallizing as a unique SNOW FLAKE.
<...appear to have found...>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishaven't we gone through this? haven't we had one or the other observer predict a few months back that at this exact time of the year there would be a new announcement that something would appear to have been found? doesn't this coïncide with the budget submissions for the new, bigger, screamier collider? how many people's paycheck depend on the latter?
they have found new data, they will find evidence of even smaller particles, it will eventually appear that their structure resembles the one of their hosts, some of these thingies will play a role in materialization, but for chrissake, stop the bull.
where have I seen Dunning-Kruger mentioned lately on this same site?
it's getting embarrassing beyond the point of recovery.
Cells within cells, within cells, within cells, within--
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpeed of the earths rotation plus
Speed of the earths orbit around the sun plus
Speed of the expanding universe or more correctly the orbit of our universe etc, etc, etc.
Add a bit of this up and the speed of light is poof, nothing.
Forces of equal evolution act upon forces of equal evolution. A particle that has been reduced in size as to not interact will appear to be moving away from earth when in fact it is we who should be getting the speeding ticket.
A short time ago CERN announced a particle faster than light. Some time ago I announced that sound was faster than light. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=162045&page=2
You perhaps don't understand how the process works. They can't say that they observed the Higgs boson because they didn't. It decays almost instantly upon forming and they have to rely on decay products. So they've seen something that looks like a Higgs boson and the evidence matches to such a degree that they've passed the five-sigma requirement that allows them to call it a discovery because the odds that it's *not* the Higgs boson is so small (1 in 588 million based on the ATLAS results).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe timing is not suspect, either. Evidence last year pointed in the direction of where it would be most likely found, and it was possible to extrapolate approximately when enough data would be collected. The LHC was still running after the announcement, gathering more data to combine and update the results. There's no begging for funds for the next collider as the next upgrade was scheduled long ago (and has even been pushed back to allow the aforementioned additional run time). The upgrade a few years after that to the Super LHC has been under discussion for a few years, but a final plan hasn't been drawn up quite yet.
I have to agree with jctyler on this one. They do not really know what they have found. I am still betting it was not the Higgs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is lot of misreporting and non-reporting about Higgs boson. Contrary to media misreporting, there is no clear cut declaration by the LHC team that the Higgs boson has really been detected. The phrase five-sigma corresponds to a p-value of 3×10-7, or about 1 in 3.5 million. This is not the probability that the Higgs boson does or doesn’t exist.It is the probability that if the particle does not exist, the data that CERN scientists collected would be at least as extreme as what they observed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe mass difference between the particles found by the two teams is 1.2 GeV. This is not a small difference. Additionally, one member of the CMS Collaboration told us that they found 4 leptons on mass 126.9 GeV. This has not been reported in the media. What was the hurry for declaring the results when the data has not been properly analyzed?
Already there is a demand to upgrade the facilities at LHC. We suspect the hurried declaration was intended to ward off funding problems.
mbasudeba@gmail.com
Very simply, in a nutshell
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFire and light are the collision of orbiting particles.
Everything orbits and there is no such thing as a straight line.
This is a response to an article about quantum computing I had read.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been puzzled of late. With the Higgs Boson "found" does that mean we have M-theory to ponder? I mean the standard model is vindicated and there is a bridge to quantum field effects within the standard model. If this is correct the M-theory is valid; please correct me if I have strayed. What I want to know is what does an electron, for instance, look like in any of the other 7 dimensions and can that be computed using this method? Can we develop sensors and emitters to augment our simple four dimensions? Does that form the basis of what dark matter is? This has had me in a transfixed state since the Higgs was defined. If anyone can elucidate more please feel free!