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…
Has the “God Particle” (the Higgs Boson) Been Discovered?
Davide Castelvecchi reports in Scientific American:
Rumors are flying about a December 13 update on the search for the long-sought Higgs boson at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider.
The physics buzz reached a frenzy in the past few days over the announcement that the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is planning to release what is widely expected to be tantalizing — although not conclusive — evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle hypothesized to be the origin of the mass of all matter.
Many physicists have already swung into action, swapping rumors about the contents of the announcement and proposing grand ideas about what those rumors would mean, if true. “It’s impossible to be excited enough,” says Gordon Kane, a theoretical physicist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Large Hadron Collider Creates Mini ‘Big Bangs’
Our universe was created after the occurrence of the Big Bang. Humans have successfully reenacted mini Big Bangs. Does this mean we could create mini universes? From The Telegraph:
The reaction created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun, which have not been reached since the first billionths of a second following the Big Bang.
The heavyweight particle collisions follow seven months of earlier experiments crashing protons – which are 200 times lighter than lead ions – at near-light speeds.
The collisions were produced by firing lead ions – atoms with their electrons removed – at incredible speeds in opposite directions around the LHC’s underground tunnel at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva.
This was expected to cause atomic particles such as protons and neutrons to melt, producing a “soup” of matter in a state previously unseen on Earth.
Scientists, including British particle physicists, will now study the…
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…
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…
Coast to Coast’s Art Bell In Conversation With Michio Kaku
Art Bell was joined for the entire program by one of his favorite guests, theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, for a discussion on a variety of science-related topics.
Kaku provided an update on the problem-plagued Large Hadron Collider (LHC), while quashing a theory that suggested the giant particle accelerator was being sabotaged from the future…
Large Hadron Collider Sets World Record
Betsy Mason reports for Wired News:
CERN announced early Monday that the Large Hadron Collider has become the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. The LHC pushed protons to 1.18 TeV (trillion electron volts), surpassing the previous record of 0.98 TeV held by Fermilab’s Tevatron.
The LHC had a rough start: It suffered a mechanical failure just a week after it fired up for the first time in September 2008. Now, 10 days after it turned on again, scientists are celebrating with their fingers crossed that the machine is safely on its way to the physics experiments they plan to begin next year when the LHC has reached its target energy of 7 TeV.
“We are still coming to terms with just how smoothly the LHC commissioning is going,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer in a press release Monday. “However, we are continuing to take it step by step, and there is still a…
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]
