It's a boson:" CERN / Higgs quest bears new particle - the "God particle" -
Scientists at Europe's CERN research center have found a new subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe, which appears to be the boson imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.
"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," CERN director general Rolf Heuer told a gathering of scientists and the world's media near Geneva on Wednesday.
"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe."
Two independent studies of data produced by smashing proton particles together at CERN's Large Hadron Collider produced a convergent near-certainty on the existence of the new particle. It is unclear whether it is exactly the boson Higgs described.
But addressing scientists assembled in the CERN auditorium, Heuer posed them a question: "As a layman, I would say I think we have it. Would you agree?" A roar of applause said they did.
Higgs, now 83, from Edinburgh University was among six theorists who proposed the existence of a mechanism by which matter in the universe gained mass. Higgs himself argued that if there were an invisible field responsible for the process, it must be made up of particles. The particle is the emissary of the field and proves its existence.
He and others were at CERN to welcome news of what, to the embarrassment of many scientists, some commentators have labeled the "God particle" for its role in turning the Big Bang into a living universe: Clearly overwhelmed, his eyes welling up, Higgs told the symposium of fellow researchers: "It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime."
He later told Reuters of his admiration for the work of the thousands of scientists and engineers who worked on the practical experimental and statistical work which had, finally, confirmed what he and others had described with mathematics.
"I had no expectation that I would still be alive when it happened," he said of the speed with which they found evidence.
"It is very satisfying," he said. "For me personally it's just the confirmation of something I did 48 years ago."
He predicted further investigation by the CERN teams would probably confirm the particle is at least related to his idea: "It would be very odd if it were not any kind of Higgs boson."
"For physics, in one way, it is the end of an era in that it completes the Standard Model," he said of the basic theory physicists currently use to describe what they understand so far of a cosmos built from 12 fundamental particles and four forces.
The two separate teams at CERN worked independently through data, hunting for tiny divergences that might betray the existence of the new boson, a class of particle named for Albert Einstein's Indian collaborator Satyendra Nath Bose.
"It's a boson!" headlined Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council in a statement on its researchers' role in the delivery of the "dramatic 5 sigma signal" for the existence of the long-sought particle.
Five sigma, a measure of probability reflecting a less than one in a million chance of a fluke in the data, is a widely accepted standard for scientists to accept the particle exists.
Read more -
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/04/us-science-higgs-idUSBRE86008K20120704
Scientists at Europe's CERN research center have found a new subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe, which appears to be the boson imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.
"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," CERN director general Rolf Heuer told a gathering of scientists and the world's media near Geneva on Wednesday.
"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe."
Two independent studies of data produced by smashing proton particles together at CERN's Large Hadron Collider produced a convergent near-certainty on the existence of the new particle. It is unclear whether it is exactly the boson Higgs described.
But addressing scientists assembled in the CERN auditorium, Heuer posed them a question: "As a layman, I would say I think we have it. Would you agree?" A roar of applause said they did.
Higgs, now 83, from Edinburgh University was among six theorists who proposed the existence of a mechanism by which matter in the universe gained mass. Higgs himself argued that if there were an invisible field responsible for the process, it must be made up of particles. The particle is the emissary of the field and proves its existence.
He and others were at CERN to welcome news of what, to the embarrassment of many scientists, some commentators have labeled the "God particle" for its role in turning the Big Bang into a living universe: Clearly overwhelmed, his eyes welling up, Higgs told the symposium of fellow researchers: "It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime."
He later told Reuters of his admiration for the work of the thousands of scientists and engineers who worked on the practical experimental and statistical work which had, finally, confirmed what he and others had described with mathematics.
"I had no expectation that I would still be alive when it happened," he said of the speed with which they found evidence.
"It is very satisfying," he said. "For me personally it's just the confirmation of something I did 48 years ago."
He predicted further investigation by the CERN teams would probably confirm the particle is at least related to his idea: "It would be very odd if it were not any kind of Higgs boson."
"For physics, in one way, it is the end of an era in that it completes the Standard Model," he said of the basic theory physicists currently use to describe what they understand so far of a cosmos built from 12 fundamental particles and four forces.
The two separate teams at CERN worked independently through data, hunting for tiny divergences that might betray the existence of the new boson, a class of particle named for Albert Einstein's Indian collaborator Satyendra Nath Bose.
"It's a boson!" headlined Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council in a statement on its researchers' role in the delivery of the "dramatic 5 sigma signal" for the existence of the long-sought particle.
Five sigma, a measure of probability reflecting a less than one in a million chance of a fluke in the data, is a widely accepted standard for scientists to accept the particle exists.
Read more -
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/04/us-science-higgs-idUSBRE86008K20120704
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