Plainly. An event display shows a Higgs candidate decaying to four electrons in the ATLAS detector. New measurements confirm that the Higgs is a Higgs.
Credit: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN
Posted on 03/15/2013 12:12:53 AM PDT by neverdem
Eight months ago, physicists working with the world's biggest atom smasher—Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—created a sensation when they reported that they had discovered a particle that appeared to be the long-sought Higgs boson, the last missing piece in their standard model of particles and forces. Today, those researchers reported that the particle does indeed have the basic predicted properties of the standard model Higgs boson, clinching the identification.
"It sure does look like the standard model Higgs boson, you bet," says Sally Dawson, a theorist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, who was not involved with the measurements.
It's a big step, at least semantically. Ever since the new particle was reported last July, officials at the home of the LHC—the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland—have taken great care to describe the new thing as a "Higgs-like particle." Now, a CERN press release calls the particle "a Higgs boson." "That's a big deal for the community," Dawson says.
To make the positive identification, researchers relied not on dental records, but on observations of how the Higgs boson decays into combinations of other, more familiar particles. Key characteristics of the Higgs include its spin and its parity, a symmetry property. They can be determined by looking at correlations in the particle directions when, for example, a Higgs boson decays into two particles called Z bosons, each of which then decays into two particles called muons.
Although not yet entirely conclusive, current measurements show that the new particle has no spin (as opposed to 1 or 2 quantum units of it) and positive parity, researchers reported today at a meeting in La Thuile, Italy. That's exactly what the standard model predicts for the Higgs boson. The measurements were made by teams working independently with two massive particle detectors fed by the LHC, which are known as ATLAS and CMS. The teams simultaneously discovered the Higgs last summer. They have analyzed roughly twice as much data now as they had analyzed then.
Ironically, most physicists had been hoping for more than the standard model's plain vanilla Higgs. "That was certainly my feelings," says Daniel Green, a member of the CMS collaboration from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. "Of course, we want to discover something new."
In fact, the new results raise the prospect that the only new thing that the $5.5 billion LHC will produce will be the standard model Higgs boson, an outcome some physicists have described as their nightmare scenario. Physicists working with the LHC say that it's too early to rule out further discoveries. The LHC has been taking data since only 2010 and has collected less than 1% of the data researchers hope to obtain by 2030. Moreover, the LHC has been running at half-energy because of faulty connections between its massive superconducting magnets. It has just shut down for 2 years of repairs that will enable it to run at full energy starting in 2015. "This is a voyage of discovery and we're still in the shallows," Green says.
Once the LHC comes back on, one of the first things that researchers will look for is other Higgs bosons. The standard model includes only one of them. But more-elaborate theories—such as one known as supersymmetry, which posits a more massive partner for every known particle—suggest there could be several. "Why would there be only one Higgs?" Dawson says. "Why wouldn't there be two, three, whatever? There's no reason to preclude it." Dawson says that she won't be willing to give up on the hope for something new until the LHC has collected about a tenth of the aimed-for data set, sometime around 2020.
Until then, CERN officials will surely continue to issue press releases about "a Higgs boson"—and hope that something else comes up before they have to start talking about "the Higgs boson."
Not quite it. This is why they are (in a preliminary fashion) calling it “a” Higgs Boson (possibly).
Painkillers mobilize blood stem cells
Sticky problem snares wonder material - Graphene-like form of silicon proves hard to handle.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
He's a string theory geek.
String theory: It's not even wrong!
It’s a pretty big deal when a theory predicts something that has never previously been observed. Then, once you know what the theory predicts, you go out, look for it, and find it.
Einstein predicting that gravity would bend light, which turned out to be true when tested was a big deal. So is this. The standard model, as gawky and ad hoc as it seems, makes good predictions of things we have never seen before and has done so pretty consistently.
Yes, I know this. I was posting in response to someone that asked “How do they know it’s the Higgs-Boson?”
While they can't be 100% certain, it's "signature" is just what was predicted by theoretical considerations for the Higgs.
Perhaps, and perhaps it's really "basic" particle, like the various quarks, and leptons.
Considering the fact that we have not been able to observe anything beyond our universe or anything smaller than the elementary particles, we can’t see the bigger or smaller picture.
Infinity leaves a lot of room for improvement.
Beyond Einstein’s Horizon
To sciencenews.org, re
“Study of energy waves formed during the Big Bang supports Einstein’s prediction that a strange, invisible force is pushing the universe apart”
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/340163/title/FOR_KIDS_%E2%80%98Ruler%E2%80%99_to_measure_space
A. From Universe-Energy-Mass-Life Compilation
http://universe-life.com/2012/02/03/universe-energy-mass-life-compilation/
From the Big-Bang it is a rationally commonsensical conjecture that the gravitons, the smallest base primal particles of the universe, must be both mass and energy, i.e. inert mass yet in motion even at the briefest fraction of a second of the pre Big Bang singularity. This is rationally commonsensical since otherwise the Big would not have Banged, the superposition of mass and energy would not have been resolved.
The universe originates, derives and evolves from this energy-mass dualism which is possible and probable due to the small size of the gravitons.
Since gravitation Is the propensity of energy reconversion to mass and energy is mass in motion, gravity is the force exerted between mass formats.
All the matter of the universe is a progeny of the gravitons evolutions, of the natural selection of mass, of some of the mass formats attaining temporary augmented energy constraint in their successive generations, with energy drained from other mass formats, to temporarily postpone, survive, the reversion of their own constitutional mass to the pool of cosmic energy fueling the galactic clusters expansion set in motion by the Big Bang.
B. From: 21st century science whence and whither
http://universe-life.com/2011/12/13/21st-century-science-whence-and-whither/
1. Dark energy and matter YOK. Per E=Total[m(1 + D)] all the energy and matter of the universe are accounted for.
Adopt space mass distance concept, constant rate mass-to-energy reconversion.
2. Higgs Particle YOK. Mass forms below some value of the above D. All mass formats evolve from the gravitons.
3. Galactic clusters formed by conglomeration?
No. Galactic clusters formed by Big-Bang’s fragments dispersion, evidenced by their Newtonian behavior including their separation acceleration.
4. The universe expansion is fueled by the mass-to-energy constant rate reconversion. Eventually, as expansion will slow down, will run out of massfuel, gravity will overcome expansion and initiate empansion back to singularity. The universe is a cyclic array of energy-mass dualism, between nearly all-energy and all-mass poles, under omnipresent gravity. Gravity is the monotheism and re-genesis of the universe.
Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)
http://universe-life.com/
-The Genome is a base organism evolved, and continuously modified, by the genes of its higher organism as their functional template.
-The 20yrs development, and comprehensive data-based scientism worldview, in a succinct format.
PS: For sciencenews is “Jewish” a taboo adjective? DH
Excellent, excellent response!!!
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