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 real effect, while the CMS team quoted a figure of about five per cent.

But this does not equate directly to a 95 per cent or higher chance that they reflect the Higgs boson, experts explained.

Oliver Buchmueller, a senior physicist on the CMS team, said: “We see a small bump around the same mass as the Atlas team and that is intriguing. It means we have two experiments seeing the same thing and that is exactly how we would expect a Higgs signal to build up.”…

[continues in the Telegraph]

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 end of its 17-mile-long particle acceleration tunnel, and both have reportedly seen the Higgs boson: the CMS detector with sigma 2.5, and ATLAS with sigma 3.5. Thanks to the matching observations, “we’re moving very close to a conclusion in the first few months of next year,” said Oliver Buchmeuller, a senior member of the CMS detector team.

If the Higgs boson has been observed, its mass of 125 GeV will probably prove to be the most interesting factor. As you probably know, the Higgs boson is odd in that our Standard Model of particle physics postulates that it exists — and if it didn’t exist, the whole Model would be faulty. This would be troublesome because, so far, the rest of the Model has stood up incredibly well to the onslaught of science. Finding the boson particle, then, is a relief, but not fundamentally world-changing — unless its physical properties are “odd,” and at 125 GeV, the boson could be very odd indeed…

[continues at ExtremeTech]

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.

Read More: Scientific American

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 particles in the hope of discovering what holds atoms together and gives them their mass.

Continues at The Telegraph…

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 £6bn LHC machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to shed light on fundamental questions in physics. It is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel, where thousands of magnets steer beams of proton particles around the vast “ring”.

At allotted points around the tunnel, the beams cross paths, smashing together near four massive “experiments” that monitor these collisions for interesting events.

Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge, revealing insights into the nature of the cosmos…

[read the full story at the BBC, including a sound file suggesting what the Higgs boson may sound like.]

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.

Gionti has a doctorate in physics and specializes in quantum gravity, and he is finishing his theology studies at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, Calif.

Father Funes told Catholic News Service that scientists at CERN are interested in “astroparticles — the first particles in the universe. And at the moment we don’t have anyone on our staff prepared to follow these studies. So maybe Gabriele Gionti has the background and the interest in collaborating on these topics.”…

[continues at the Catholic Spirit]

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. Kuku said the LHC is operating very smoothly now and should begin producing real data in six months. Scientists hope this colossal experiment will help them better understand the birth of our universe and prove the existence of dark mater, Kaku explained.

He commented on the Royal Society’s recent conference on extraterrestrial life and its possible effect on humanity. According to Kaku, this topic is being debated in serious academic circles for a few reasons: the discovery of numerous extrasolar planets, the Kepler Telescope, and the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). So far we have found 400 exoplanets about the size of Jupiter, Kaku said. Kepler will help us find much smaller Earth-size planets, perhaps some with liquid oceans, where life could have developed. The ATA will allow us listen for distant signals from these potential alien civilizations, he added.

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 lot to do before we start physics in 2010. I’m keeping my champagne on ice until then.”

The first beam was injected on November 20, and two beams sped around the 17-mile ring in opposite directions three days later. All four of the LHC’s detectors recorded data from the collision of those two beams.

The first to announce the record may have been the scientists running the CMS detector through their Twitter feed:

@CMSexperiment: World Record!! Tonight at about 22:00 the LHC accelerated a beam of protons to 1180 GeV – a new record energy! …

[continues in Wired News]

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]