Archive
ATLAS and CMS publish observations of a new particle in the search for the Higgs boson
10 September 2012
The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN today published observations of a new particle in the search for the Higgs boson in the journal Physics Letters B.
The papers: “Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC” and “Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC” are freely available online on ScienceDirect.
“These papers present the first observations of a new particle discovered by two big experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson which has spanned many decades and has involved many experiments,” says CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela. “They are the most important papers to come from the LHC so far and the findings are key to the field of particle physics. We are very pleased to see them published in Physics Letters B, accessible to all who may want to read them.”
Read more: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Experiments Bring New Insight Into Matter of the Primordial Universe
ScienceDaily (Aug. 13, 2012) — Experiments using heavy ions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are advancing understanding of the primordial Universe. The ALICE, ATLAS and CMS collaborations have made new measurements of the kind of matter that probably existed in the first instants of the Universe. They will present their latest results at the 2012 Quark Matter conference, which starts August 13 in Washington DC. The new findings are based mainly on the four-week LHC run with lead ions in 2011, during which the experiments collected 20 times more data than in 2010.
Just after the Big Bang, quarks and gluons — basic building blocks of matter — were not confined inside composite particles such as protons and neutrons, as they are today. Instead, they moved freely in a state of matter known as ‘quark-gluon plasma’. Collisions of lead ions in the LHC, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, recreate for a fleeting moment conditions similar to those of the early Universe. By examining a billion or so of these collisions, the experiments have been able to make more precise measurements of the properties of matter under these extreme conditions.
“The field of heavy-ion physics is crucial for probing the properties of matter in the primordial Universe, one of the key questions of fundamental physics that the LHC and its experiments are designed to address. It illustrates how in addition to the investigation of the recently discovered Higgs-like boson, physicists at the LHC are studying many other important phenomena in both proton-proton and lead-lead collisions,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813115445.htm
Higgs boson: scientists 99.999% sure ‘God Particle’ has been found
July 4, 2012
Scientists believe they have captured the elusive “God particle” that gives matter mass and holds the physical fabric of the universe together.

The historic announcement came in a progress report from the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator.
Professor John Womersley, chief executive of the Science and technology Facilities Council, told reporters at a briefing in London: “They have discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson.
“Discovery is the important word. That is confirmed. It’s a momentous day for science.”
Scientists say it is a 5 sigma result which means they are 99.999% sure they have found a new particle.
Finding the Higgs plugs a gaping hole in the Standard Model, the theory that describes all the particles, forces and interactions that make up the universe.
Watch Live: Higgs Boson Announcement
July 4, 2012
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/watch-live-higgs-talk/
Officials at CERN will finally be revealing their latest results in the search for the Higgs boson during a talk starting at midnight PT (3 a.m. ET) on July 4.
Physicists have been eagerly waiting for this announcement, with hopes running high that the new data will pin down Higgs boson with enough precision to consider it discovered. Previously, LHC results have strongly signaled the existence of a Higgs with a mass of 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), or roughly 125 times more massive than the proton. More recently, rumors have been flying that suggest this talk will be the definitive announcement of the long-sought boson’s discovery.
Read more : http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/watch-live-higgs-talk/
God particle is ‘found’: Scientists at Cern expected to announce on Wednesday Higgs boson particle has been discovered
July 2, 2012
- Scientists ‘will say they are 99.99% certain’ the particle has been found
- Leading physicists have been invited to event – sparking speculation that Higgs Boson particle has been found
- ‘God Particle’ gives particles that make up atoms their mass
PUBLISHED: 14:00, 1 July 2012 | UPDATED: 14:41, 1 July 2012
Scientists at Cern will announce that the elusive Higgs boson ‘God Particle’ has been found at a press conference next week, it is believed.
Five leading theoretical physicists have been invited to the event on Wednesday – sparking speculation that the particle has been discovered.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are expected to say they are 99.99 per cent certain it has been found – which is known as ‘four sigma’ level.

Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern
Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists – because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.
Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.
The result – which threatens to upend a century of physics – will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.
In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.
“We tried to find all possible explanations for this,” said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.
“We wanted to find a mistake – trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects – and we didn’t,” he told BBC News.
“When you don’t find anything, then you say ‘Well, now I’m forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.'”
Caught speeding?
The speed of light is the Universe’s ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics – as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity – depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it.

Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit.
But Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.
Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another.
The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.
In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.
The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.
But the group understands that what are known as “systematic errors” could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit, and that has motivated them to publish their measurements.
“My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing – then I would be relieved,” Dr Ereditato said.
But for now, he explained, “we are not claiming things, we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result – because it is crazy”.
“And of course the consequences can be very serious.”
Alarmists Got it Wrong, Humans Not Responsible for Climate Change: CERN
‘Global warming and climate change are phenomena that broke the bonds of scientific circles to emerge as a matter of debate between “believers” and “skeptics.” Countless studies validating and denying global warming have seen the light of the day, providing fodder for more, often somewhat bitter debates. Within the past month, Nobel Prize winner and leading climate change “alarmist” Al Gore has called those who deny global warming akin to “racists,” and “pseudo-scientists,” and accused media of manipulating evidence about global warming.
Research findings published by none other than CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in the journal Nature which holds cosmic rays and the Sun, not human activities, responsible for global warming, isn’t exactly what Gore would welcome right now.’
Read more: Alarmists Got it Wrong, Humans Not Responsible for Climate Change: CERN