guardian.co.uk,
Ian Sample at Cern, Geneva, Wednesday 4 July 2012
 |
| A representation of traces of a proton-proton collision in the search for the Higgs boson, released by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern). Photograph: AFP/Getty Images |
There comes
a time in a scientist's life when the weight of evidence can no longer be
ignored. That moment came today for physicists at Cern, near Geneva, home of
the Large Hadron Collider, who announced overwhelming evidence for the obscure
but profoundly important Higgs boson, the particle that sparked the greatest
hunt in modern science.
In
presentations given to a packed auditorium at the laboratory on Wednesday
morning, and webcast around the world, the leaders of two research teams, who
worked independently of each other, said they had spotted a new particle amid
the microscopic flashes of primordial fire created inside the world's most
powerful atom smasher.
Cern
stopped short of claiming official discovery of the Higgs boson, even as many
physicists conceded the evidence was now so compelling they had surely found
the missing particle.
Formal
confirmation of the discovery is expected within months, though it could take
several years for scientists to work out whether they have found the simplest
kind of Higgs particle that theories predict, or part of a more complex
picture: for example, one of a larger family of Higgs bosons. The discovery of
more than one kind of Higgs particle would open the door to an entirely new
realm of physics.
"Is it
a Higgs boson or not? Well, it has been found using techniques tuned for the
Standard Model Higgs. A different object might have stepped in, but it is quite
unlikely in my humble opinion," said Tommaso Dorigo, a scientist on the
CMS experimental team at Cern. The Standard Model Higgs boson is the most
simplest proposed version of particle.
The queue
for the auditorium left some physicists struggling for a seat to hear the
announcement. Those inside broke into applause when Peter Higgs, the
83-year-old father of the particle, entered the room. "Cern should really
build a larger auditorium. The present one is nice and cosy, but it is
embarrassing and sad to see many distinguished colleagues queueing up at five
in the morning knowing that they have a slim chance to get a seat, after
working for 20 years on finding the Higgs boson," said Dorigo.
Scientists
and engineers at the lab, many exhausted from working round the clock in recent
weeks, clapped and whistled as Joe Incandela and Fabiola Gianotti, the
respective heads of the Large Hadron Collider detector teams called CMS and
Atlas, presented their results for the first time. Both teams saw the particle,
which has a mass of around 125 to 126 GeV, about 130 times the mass of a
proton.
"It's
hard not to get excited by these results," said Cern research director,
Sergio Bertolucci.
The lab's
director general, Rolf Dieter Heuer, said: "We have reached a milestone in
our understanding of nature." He later added: "As a layman I would
now say I think we have it" – meaning the Higgs.
They have
worked hard and long for this day. The particle, which is unlike any other
known to exist, was proposed 48 years ago, when physicists worked on the laws
of nature with pen and paper instead of the sleek, high-end laptops they carry
around today. The hunt has spanned decades and occupied thousands of
researchers from tens of countries. For some, this has been their life's work.
There is
never a bad time for good news, but Cern will be relieved to have made the
breakthrough before the machine shuts down for almost two years at the end of
2012, when engineers move in to carry out work for the accelerator to run at
its full design energy.
The
discovery of the Higgs particle ranks as one of the most important scientific
advances of the past 100 years. It proves there is an invisible energy field
that pervades the vacuum of the known universe. This field is thought to give
mass to the smallest building blocks of matter, the quarks and electrons that
make up atoms. Without the field, or something like it, there would be no
planets, stars, or life as we know it.
While
scientists work to understand the new particle, the discovery raises a quandary
for the Nobel committee that must now decide who deserves credit for the work.
Traditionally, Nobel prizes go to no more than three people, but six physicists
published papers on the theory in 1964, and others laid important groundwork
beforehand or developed the theory later.
Peter Higgs
at Edinburgh University was the first to point out in 1964 that a new particle,
the eponymous boson, was a by-product of the mass-giving field. That was a
crucial step, because it gave scientists a smoking gun to hunt for in their
experiments. One of the original gang of six, Robert Brout at the Free
University in Brussels, died last year. The others are Francois Englert from
Belgium, Tom Kibble from the UK, and Dick Hagen and Gerry Guralnik in the US.
Peter Higgs
said: "I am astounded at the amazing speed with which these results have
emerged. They are a testament to the expertise of the researchers and the
elaborate technologies in place.
"I
never expected this to happen in my lifetime and shall be asking my family to
put some champagne in the fridge."
According
to the theory, all of the particles in the newborn universe were massless and
hurtled around at the speed of light. But one trillionth of a second after the
big bang, the Higgs field switched on, turning the vacuum of space into a kind
of cosmic glue.
Some
particles feel the Higgs field more than others. The quarks that make up atomic
nuclei feel a lot of drag from the field, and become heavy for subatomic
particles. Others, such as electrons, feel less drag and gain much less weight.
Particles of light, called photons, feel no drag at all, and so remain massless
and keep moving at the speed of light.
To find the
Higgs particle, physicists at Cern sifted through the subatomic debris of more
than 1,000 trillion proton collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider.
Occasionally, these collisions might create a Higgs boson, which immediately
disintegrates into more familiar particles. To spot the boson, the scientists
have to look for unusual excesses of the particles it decays into, which appear
as bumps in their data.
Particle
physicists use a "sigma" scale to rank the certainty of their results
which ranges from one to five. One and two sigma results come and go and are
often no more than statistical fluctuations in the data. A three sigma result
counts as an official "observation", but five sigma is usually needed
to claim a discovery, amounting to less than a one in a million chance that it
is wrong.
Evidence
for the Higgs boson has risen sharply in the past seven months. In December,
the Atlas and CMS teams at Cern reported what appeared to be hints of a Higgs
particle weighing about 125gigaelectronvolts (GeV), roughly 130 times heavier
than a proton.
On
Wednesday, that evidence became overwhelming. The Atlas team reported a
particle at 126.5GeV with a confidence of five sigma, while the CMS team found
a particle with a mass of 125.3 GeV with a 4.9 sigma confidence.
At the end
of the announcement, the room erupted into a standing ovation of whoops, cheers
and whistles. Peter Higgs, reached for a tissue and wiped a tear from his eye.
 |
Higgs
boson: The poetry of
subatomic particles
|
(Subjects: Benevolent Design, Channelling, Holy scriptures, Higher self, (Old) Souls, Universes, Big Bang, Galaxy/Solar system build for life, Astronomy, Life on Earth tried to start 5 times/ 5th time life started, Large Animals/No Humans, Asteroid belt, 7 Sisters / 100.000 year ago Pleiadian Brothers and Sisters seeded Humans on earth, DNA, Humans Ascensiont with PleiadianDNA, Lemuria (Hawaii), 21-12-2012, 26.000 years cycle, 1987 - Harmonic convergence (11:11), Shift of Human Consciousness, Gaia, The Humanization of God, 1991 Russia falls, 1994 started 36 years galactic window (Presession), Mid point on 21-12-2012, Lemuria (Hawaii) center of the Earth time, Love (Mother & Child), Religion, Higher self, Global Unity,..... etc.)
"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)
.
No comments:
Post a Comment