God Particle Proves Elusive
For those of you following the “God Particle” saga, the scientists at CERN disappointed us all at today’s much hyped news conference. Nick Collins reports for the Telegraph:
At a specially-arranged seminar at the Cern laboratory in Geneva, researchers presented clues in their data which suggest experts may have pinned down the “God particle” at last.
Scientists remained cautious about their findings and insisted they did not represent an official discovery, but admitted the results were “intriguing”.
The two teams searching for the Higgs boson at the LHC said they had found hints which point towards a Higgs boson with a mass between 124 and 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).
A mass of 125 GeV is equivalent to about 130 times the weight of a proton found in the nucleus of an atom.
The team working on the ATLAS detector said there was only a one per cent likelihood their results occurred by chance rather than reflecting…
A Glimpse Of The God Particle
A simulated event in the CMS detector, featuring the appearance of the Higgs boson. (CERN)
As an update to this post, physicists the world over are all ashiver at the prospect of the elusive Higgs boson particle being announced tomorrow. Via ExtremeTech:
Tomorrow, at 9am EST, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland are expected to announce, with fairly strong certainty, that they have observed the Higgs boson “God” particle at a mass-energy of 125 GeV.
For just over a week, rumors have been rife that observations with 2.5 to 3.5 sigma certainty (96% to 99.9%) have been made. For it to be declared an actual discovery, however, a sigma level of five has to be recorded. A score on the higher end of the range, towards 3.5, would definitely have particle physicists, engineers, scientists, and philosophers jumping around excitedly, though. Perhaps more importantly, LHC has two detectors at the…
CERN’s Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Speed Of Light
Scientists making discoveries that defy the laws of physics seems to be something of a theme this month. Now the eggheads at CERN say they’ve observed subatomic particles moving faster than the speed of light, which might theoretically allow us to travel back in time. Eryn Brown and Amina Khan report for the LA Times:
Albert Einstein had the idea. A century of observations have backed it up. It’s one of the cornerstones of physics: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light.
But now a team of experimental physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, says that one exotic particle possibly can.
The scientists reached their conclusion after sending streams of tiny, subatomic particles called neutrinos hurtling from an accelerator at CERN outside Geneva to a detector at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, about 450 miles away.
The neutrinos seemed to get there too soon — 60 nanoseconds…
CERN Scientists Back Alternative Climate Change Theory
For those of you who think that all scientists subscribe to the “global warning is caused by humans” theory, some very prominent exceptions are making some noise, now led by the boffins at CERN, reports Anne Jolis in the Wall Street Journal:
In April 1990, Al Gore published an open letter in the New York Times “To Skeptics on Global Warming” in which he compared them to medieval flat-Earthers. He soon became vice president and his conviction that climate change was dominated by man-made emissions went mainstream. Western governments embarked on a new era of anti-emission regulation and poured billions into research that might justify it. As far as the average Western politician was concerned, the debate was over.
But a few physicists weren’t worrying about Al Gore in the 1990s. They were theorizing about another possible factor in climate change: charged subatomic particles from outer space, or “cosmic rays,” whose atmospheric…
Is This What God Sounds Like?
Fascinating developments from the Large Hadron Collider, as the BBC reports that the so-called “God particle” has been simulated as sound:
Scientists have simulated the sounds set to be made by sub-atomic particles such as the Higgs boson when they are produced at the Large Hadron Collider.
Their aim is to develop a means for physicists at Cern to “listen to the data” and pick out the Higgs particle if and when they finally detect it.
Dr Lily Asquith modelled data from the giant Atlas experiment at the LHC. She worked with sound engineers to convert data expected from collisions at the LHC into sounds.
“If the energy is close to you, you will hear a low pitch and if it’s further away you hear a higher pitch,” the particle physicist told BBC News. “If it’s lots of energy it will be louder and if it’s just a bit of energy it will be quieter.”
The…
Laser War In Space To Prove Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity
This is pretty cool science! From PopSci:
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is currently the biggest science experiment in operation, but it may have to pass that mantle on soon enough. A collaboration between NASA and the ESA plans to launch three spacecraft into orbit around the sun 3 million miles apart, then have them shoot lasers at each other, all in the name of proving the existence of gravitational waves, the last piece of Einstein’s relativity theory that is as yet unproved.
Einstein’s general relativity predicts several things, such as gravity’s ability to bend time light and the constant speed at which gravity travels. But a means to prove the existence of gravitational waves — huge ripples in time and space that flow outwards from the collision of huge celestial bodies like black holes — has eluded scientists for years.
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, aims to do just that. Three…
CERN And The Vatican Will Study Origins Of The Universe Together
If you’re among the millions of people who read Dan Brown’s Illuminati-vs.-Catholic Church thriller Angels & Demons, you’ll feel that the idea of the Vatican collaborating with CERN on the Large Hadron Collider project is more than a little unlikely; nonetheless, the Catholic Spirit is reporting that it’s going to happen:
The Geneva-based laboratory would like to invite an astronomer from the Vatican Observatory to collaborate on studies concerning the origin of the universe, said Ugo Amaldi, a professor of medical physics and president of the TERA Foundation, which works closely with CERN in finding ways to apply atomic research in treating cancer.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, “is an international and European (facility), and to have the Vatican Observatory send some or one of its young scientists will be something that is extremely important,” he said.
He made his comments during a Dec. 10 Vatican press conference launching the Italian-language version of “The Heavens Proclaim,” a book about the history of the Vatican and astronomy.
The head of the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Father Jose Funes, said during the book presentation that he hopes Gabriele Gionti, a young Vatican astronomer who will be ordained in June, will be involved in the CERN collaboration…
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Making Massive Progress
The BBC reports:
Researchers working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they are delighted with the progress made since the machine restarted on Friday.
One official said the collider had done more in a few hours than it did in five days of operations last year.
The LHC is being used to smash together beams of protons in a bid to shed light on the nature of the Universe.
Housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the Franco-Swiss border, it is the world’s largest machine.
During the experiment, scientists will search for signs of the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle that is crucial to our current understanding of physics. Although it is predicted to exist, scientists have never found it.
[continues at the BBC]
Nuclear Engineer from CERN lab arrested for Al-Qaeda links
Adam Sage reports for The Times:
Fears that al-Qaeda is planning an attack on the nuclear industry in Europe were renewed yesterday after French secret agents arrested a physicist working at an atomic research centre.
The 32-year-old man, who was detained with his brother, 25, is suspected of providing a list of terrorist targets to North African Islamic radicals. He worked for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, according to French police sources.
Agents were said to have intercepted messages in which the physicist, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, had suggested targets in France.
He is believed to have been in contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian-based terror organisation that joined Osama bin Laden’s network in 2007.
