Higgs Boson Evidence Found At Large Hadron Collider

Image Source: CERN

 Physics

The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN today presented their latest results in the search for the long-sought Higgs boson. Both experiments see strong indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson, in the mass region around 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).

At this morning's meeting held at CERN, two teams of scientists presented the latest results from the search for the long-sought Higgs particle. After 30 years of research and $9 billion of investment, they've changed the face of physics forever: they have substantial evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson.

The Higgs boson is the elementary particle, postulated to help explain mass under a set of theories known as the Standard Model of physics. Supersymmetry predicts a partner particle for every particle in the Standard Model. These particles could help deduce the mass of the Higgs boson.

The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN today presented their latest results in the search for the long-sought Higgs boson. Both experiments see strong indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson, in the mass region around 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).

The experiments found hints of the new particle by analysing trillions of proton-proton collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2011 and 2012. The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that a Higgs boson would decay into different particles – which the LHC experiments then detect.

Both ATLAS and CMS gave the level of significance of the result as 5 sigma on the scale that particle physicists use to describe the certainty of a discovery. One sigma means the results could be random fluctuations in the data, 3 sigma counts as an observation and a 5-sigma result is a discovery. The results presented today are preliminary, as the data from 2012 is still under analysis. The complete analysis is expected to be published around the end of July.

“We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle’s properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.”





SOURCE  CERN

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