CERN Physicists Observe Higgs-Like Particle

[Class-Punk]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-04/cern-removes-video-saying-physicists-found-higgs-like-particle

Scientists seeking to explain the origins of matter discovered a particle that may support a decades-old theory of physics, bringing people closer to understanding unseen parts of the universe.

The observed particle is the heaviest boson ever found, said Joe Incandela, spokesman for one of the experiments at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, at a seminar today at its Geneva headquarters. Scientists stopped short of claiming the particle is the elusive Higgs boson, a theoretical particle that could explain where mass comes from.

“As a layman, I think I would say ‘we have it,’” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of CERN, at a press conference in Geneva. It will take at least three to four years of research to fully understand the properties of the observed particle, Heuer said.

The announcement brings humankind closer to answering a millennia-old question that the ancient Greeks wrestled with: what is matter made of? The particle is a key to the Standard Model, a theory explaining how the universe is built, and its existence would help scientists gain a better understanding of how galaxies hold together. It also could open a door to exploring other parts of physics such as superparticles or dark matter that telescopes can’t detect.

‘Sings and Dances’

The new boson “sings and dances like” the theoretical particle, said Pauline Gagnon, a researcher on the Atlas set of experiments in Geneva, in an interview in Melbourne, where she was attending the bi-annual International Conference on High Energy Physics. “There is no doubt it comes from a different signal, different channels, with different experiments. We just need in the next few months with more data to ascertain exactly what are the properties of this particle to see if it is exactly the Standard Model Higgs boson or some variation of it."”

Particle physics is the study of the elemental building blocks that make up matter. These particles, with names such as quark, fermion, lepton and boson, can’t be subdivided. They exist and interact within several unseen ‘‘fields’’ that permeate the universe.

The field that generates mass for objects is named for U.K. physicist Peter Higgs, who in the 1960s was one of the first scientists to outline a working theory on how elemental particles achieve mass. Higgs was one of four of the theorists attending today’s meeting in Geneva. He wiped a tear from his eye as the findings were presented.

Champagne for Higgs

‘‘For me, it’s really an incredible thing that it’s happened in my lifetime,” Higgs said in Geneva. In a statement, he said he would be “asking my family to put some champagne in the fridge.”

Higgs wrote that some particles -- such as photons, the basic unit of light -- don’t interact with the Higgs field, and thus don’t achieve mass. Most others do.

To put it another way, if the Higgs field were a Hollywood party, a photon would be the unknown actor who hurries through without gaining a bit of interest from others in the room. Other particles would be more like Angelina Jolie, drawing crowds of hangers-on as they move through the party.

It gets increasingly harder to stop such a cluster from moving forward and more difficult to get it moving again once it’s stopped, meeting one definition of mass.

Scientists are trying to prove the existence of the Higgs field by displaying a physical effect for the Higgs boson, a particle that lives for less than a trillionth of a second and is an excitation, or force, within the Higgs field.

Digging Deeper

Providing indirect evidence that the Higgs field exists will allow scientists to dig even deeper into the secrets of our existence, said Mark Wise, a professor of physics at California Institute of Technology.

“In some sense, this is the beginning,” Wise said of finding the boson. “Because we want to know all its properties.”

The data being presented today are the latest from the $10.5 billion Large Hadron Collider, a 27-kilometer (17-mile) circumference particle accelerator buried on the border of France and Switzerland. CERN has 10,000 scientists working on the project, in which billions of subatomic particles are hurled at each other at velocities approaching the speed of light.

The collider will provide more data later this year, giving scientists a more complete picture of the observed new particle. Researchers will try to determine whether it is a Higgs boson, the particle predicted by the Standard Model.

Like Columbus

“Very few physicists would privately argue that this is not a Higgs particle,” said Themis Bowcock, head of particle physics at the University of Liverpool, said in a statement. “For physicists, this is the equivalent of Columbus discovering America.”

A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could help scientists understand the 96 percent of the universe that remains obscure, since observable matter only represents 4 percent of the total, CERN said.

To declare the boson is discovered, physicists use the statistical standard of “five sigma,” meaning that there should only be a 1 in 3.4 million chance that a sighting would be due to chance. The observations of the new particle have a five-sigma level of significance, Incandela said.

“The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks,” he said.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

This needs some actual detail its an odd story as it talks about reactions to the find, but not the find itself. I mean I know that the higgs field would be a big deal but finding "the heaviest boson" ? A boson just being a a general term for a wide range of sub atomic particles. It could be just a photon (unlikely since they are "massless" and this article talks about "heavy" or some other type of boson already known (neutrons, protons, whatever) the only ones that would be a HOLY SHIT (I think) boson would be a Gravitons or Higgs Bosons (predicted but never observed). But this isn't saying that. *googles*

[Simon Bar Sinister]

Here's CERN's press release: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR17.12E.html

[Troy Spiral (13)]

“We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”

"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."

I guess they are saying they think they've found the very big deal , never found before, higgs boson (5 sigma just being a level of "how sure are we about this?" that usually means "we are damn sure"). That is, fairly strong evidence for the higgs field, which itself is an explanation why some particles particles that shouldn't have mass according to the current theories, have mass (among other things).

Although last year they thought they found faster than light particles and that was probably the biggest science story of the year , now, its found that the experiment was in error.

Not that I mind errors, I like that the scientific community is self correcting.

[Simon Bar Sinister]

Although last year they thought they found faster than light particles and that was probably the biggest science story of the year , now, its found that the experiment was in error.

I actually watched that press conference as it happened. They did not make some big announcement about FTL particles. They said they had some impossible results on neutrinos and practically begged other scientists to suggest all the ways that they could've gotten it wrong.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

I actually watched that press conference as it happened. They did not make some big announcement about FTL particles. They said they had some impossible results on neutrinos and practically begged other scientists to suggest all the ways that they could've gotten it wrong.

I remember, and they never really got any good answers. I remember an interview with one of the guys involved in the research saying something like "unfortunately most of the suggestions made me think "we aren't that dumb".

I guess it depends on who "they" are that we are talking about, they did beg for help going over the results, there were several press conferences about the neutrinos after no one could find any errors, it was in all the journals after that, Science, Nature, and the popular science news mags like Discover , Scientific American. (was discovers no 1 story of the year, as well as a ton of other scientific blogs/journals "year end roundup" type things no 1 story) and many other general news places. But was still presented as "we need to do more research still" which, is the same as is done here , except this seems more sure-footed. (FTL would be a bigger deal than a higgs boson, so it makes sense to be more cautious about one than the other).

Interesting regardless.

I'm not knocking the scientific community if that's what it sounds like.

[0pheliA]

This makes me so excited. Just a few months ago there was legitimate concern they wouldn't find it, and much of our physical models and theory since the 70s would have been flipped on their ass. As of April they were speculating that there was only a 1% chance they were going to find it at all, and it actually may not have existed.

[Nymada del Sol]

I wonder what the applications of this discovery will be towards human technology?

[Troy Spiral (13)]

I wonder what the applications of this discovery will be towards human technology?

Nothing directly anytime soon unfortunately. But E = MC2 was "useless" for a long time too , and now our cell phones wouldn't work properly without it, so who knows.

Its more of just something that gives us more solid verification that we were iffy about in the past.

Our basic assumptions about everything in the universe that has a physical existence, so you could just call it "everything" (physics) are still not really "proven" (deep question there) they just seem to be correct.

But for instance Newtons (probably the single biggest figure in science) were "useful" and accurate enough to send people to the moon, but almost all of them are actually incorrect when you get down to very very tiny sizes or very very large sizes. You need Einstein's Relativity for very large sizes (galaxies and such) and Quantum Mechanics for very small sizes (atoms and smaller)... two seemingly incomparable concepts, still, today not unified ideas, and still both, possibly inaccurate).

Quantum Mechanics = Tiny Tiny World (atoms and light)

Newtonian Physics = Middle Size World (Us and what we see every day)

Einstein's Relativity = Huge + very fast things (things approaching the speed of light , large sources of gravity etc)

All three do not play nice with each other , but all are VERY accurate in their respective "worlds".

So the assumption is that something is wrong with our understanding, and we need a "Unified Theory" which, doesn't exist yet, but String Theory is our current "guess" at what that might be. The higgs bosons existence, is very indirect evidence that one aspect of string theory might be correct, and a tiny step toward proving a unified "Theory of Everything" (and one more verification of the already supremely well verified Quantum Mechanics.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

As of April they were speculating that there was only a 1% chance they were going to find it at all, and it actually may not have existed.

Really? I hadn't read this. I just was under the impression they were very confident about finding the higgs boson. I thought I red something like "2012 will be the year we find it". (having to do with what was needed, and that the LHC had what it took to pinpoint it, I assumed. (without really having done much homework on this.)

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Thought the title of this was pretty funny:

Finally - A Higgs Boson Story Anyone Can Understand

Problem is "anyone" also has to be patient enough to read it, which, from that perspective "anyone can get a PhD in rocket science" too.

That is a neat series of articles though, from their Evolution 101 to the "Timeline of the Earth".

[0pheliA]

Really? I hadn't read this. I just was under the impression they were very confident about finding the higgs boson. I thought I red something like "2012 will be the year we find it". (having to do with what was needed, and that the LHC had what it took to pinpoint it, I assumed. (without really having done much homework on this.)

Actually it was really strongly looking like we wouldn't find it. That would have sent 40 years of physics on its ear. Not that that is a bad thing.

In a nerd way, this is almost like finding Pym Particles. Though closer to what potentially could make the Vision work than Antman/Giantman. Being able to manipulate these at some point will be huge, even more than just effecting mass. It is the kind of discovery which literally changes everything in our small universe. Manipulation of Higgs particles can mean making things weigh effectively nothing, or everything. This changes everything.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

Actually it was really strongly looking like we wouldn't find it. That would have sent 40 years of physics on its ear. Not that that is a bad thing.

I knew I wasnt halucinating, this isnt the article I read but it covers what I remember reading (probably in scientific american or discover, since thats all I usually read, I dont read much online science stuff unless its to research something specific).

The title of article quoted below is "Year of The Higgs" published in Feburary, they were actually planning the shut the LHC down , but realized that the higgs was close and kept it running specifically to find the higgs as they realized how close they were.

Confident that everything is functioning properly, the LHC research community recently announced a decision to delay a planned shutdown of the particle accelerator until the end of 2012.

If the machine continues to function at the current level, researchers believe they can explore the entire "allowed region"--the ranges of mass in which the standard model Higgs boson could exist--by the end of 2012. "This was one of the reasons to run in 2012 and not just this year," said Gustaaf Brooijmans of Columbia University and the US ATLAS experiment.

"Our projections now say that with the 2012 run we should be able to probe about 90-95 percent of the 'allowed region' for the existence of the Higgs boson."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2011-02-year-higgs.html#jCp

I hope you don't think im being mean or anything, I just really remembered something like this (vaguely) and these are "the guys" doing the experiments , not just random scientists speculating lets say.

[0pheliA]

It was actually a youtube science series I had watched that had stated they were concerned they weren't going to find it. They had been consistently accurate throughout its run so I took the statement to have at least some level of truth to it. Of course something directly from LHC people's would trump that.