PHNO-SI: 'GOD PARTICLE' FOUND? HISTORIC MILESTONE FOR HIGGS BOSON HUNTERS

'GOD PARTICLE' FOUND? HISTORIC MILESTONE FOR HIGGS BOSON
HUNTERS
CYBERSPACE,
JUNE 23, 2012 (NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC) Ker Than for National Geographic News Published July 4,
2012
(PHNO's question: Why is it called God's Particle? From
Wikipedia-- The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the
Question? is a 1993 popular science book by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon
M. Lederman and science writer Dick Teresi. The book provides a brief history of
particle physics, starting with the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Democritus,
and continuing through Isaac Newton, Roger J. Boscovich, Michael Faraday, and
Ernest Rutherford and quantum physics in the 20th century. Lederman said he gave
the Higgs boson the nickname "The God Particle" because the particle is "so
central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of
the structure of matter, yet so elusive," but jokingly added that a second
reason was because "the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle,
though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and
the expense it is causing."]

Newfound particle may be at the core of existence.
By
Ker Than for National Geographic

[PHOTO -In an artist's conception, a Higgs boson
erupts
from a collision of protons. llustration by Moonrunner Design Ltd.,

National Geographic]
"I think we have it. You agree?"

[PHOTO -Cern director Rolf Heuer welcomes Higgs boson news]
Speaking to a packed audience Wednesday morning in Geneva, CERN director
general Rolf Heuer confirmed that two separate teams working at the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) are more than 99 percent certain they've discovered the Higgs
boson, aka the God particle—or at the least a brand-new particle exactly where
they expected the Higgs to be.
The long-sought particle may complete the standard model of physics by
explaining why objects in our universe have mass—and in so doing, why galaxies,
planets, and even humans have any right to exist.
(See Large
Hadron Collider pictures.)
"We have a discovery," Heuer said at the seminar. "We have observed a new
particle consistent with a Higgs boson."
At the meeting were four theorists who helped develop the Higgs theory in the
1960s, including Peter Higgs himself, who could be seen wiping away tears as the
announcement was made.
Although preliminary, the results show a so-called five-sigma of
significance, which means that there is only a one in a million chance that the
Higgs-like signal the teams observed is a statistical fluke.
"It's a tremendous and exciting time," said physicist Michael Tuts, who works
with the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) Experiment, one of the two
Higgs-seeking LHC projects.
The Columbia University physicist had organized a wee-hours gathering of
physicists and students in the U.S. to watch the announcement, which took place
at 9 a.m., Geneva time.
"This is the payoff. This is what you do it for."

[PHOTO- The Compact Muon Solenoid (pictured), one of three
particle
detectors within the Large Hadron Collider. Photograph by Mark
Thiessen,
National Geographic]
The two LHC teams searching for the Higgs—the other being the CMS (Compact
Muon Solenoid) project—did so independently. Neither one knew what the other
would present this morning.
"It was interesting that the competing experiment essentially had the same
result," said physicist Ryszard Stroynowski, an ATLAS team member based at
Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "It provides additional confirmation."

CERN head Heuer called today's announcement a "historic milestone" but
cautioned that much work lies ahead as physicists attempt to confirm the
newfound particle's identity and further probe its properties.
For example, though the teams are certain the new particle has the proper
mass for the predicted Higgs boson, they still need to determine whether it
behaves as the God particle is thought to behave—and therefore what its role in
the creation and maintenance of the universe is.
"I think we can all be proud ... but it's a beginning," Heuer said.
Higgs Boson Results Exceeded Expectations
The five-sigma results from both the ATLAS and CMS experiments exceeded the
expectations of many physicists, including David Evans, leader of the U.K. team
that works on the LHC-based ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment)
Collaboration.
Evans had predicted Tuesday the teams would announce a four-sigma result—just
short of the rigorous standard traditionally required for a new-particle
observation to officially count as a true discovery and not a fluke.
"It's even better than I expected," said Evans, of the University of
Birmingham in the U.K. "I think we can say the Higgs is here. It exists."
Evans attributed the stronger-than-expected results to "a mixture of the LHC
doing a fantastic job" and "ATLAS and CMS doing a fantastic job of improving
their analysis since December," when the two teams announced a two-sigma
observation of signs of a Higgs-like particle.
"So even with the same data, they can get more significance."
ATLAS spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti also had high praise for the LHC, a
multibillion-dollar machine that had suffered numerous mishaps and setbacks in
its early days. (Related: "Electrical Glitch Delays Large Hadron Collider.")

"The LHC and experiments have been doing miracles. I think we are working
beyond design," the Italian particle physicist added.
ALICE's Evans said he was extremely pleased by the Higgs results but admitted
feeling just a bit disappointed that the results weren't more surprising.
"Secretly I would have loved it to be something slightly different than the
standard model predictions, because that would indicate that there's something
more out there."
On God-Particle Hunt, It's "Easy to Fool Yourself"

[PHOTO -One possible signature of a Higgs boson from a

simulated proton–proton collision. It decays almost
immediately into two
jets of hadrons and two electrons,
visible as lines.WIKIPEDIA
PHOTO]

Wednesday's announcement builds on results from last
December, when the ATLAS and CMS teams said their data suggested that the Higgs
boson has a mass of about 125 gigaelectron volts (GeV)—about 125 times the mass
of a proton, a positively charged particle in an atom's nucleus.

(See "Hints
of Higgs Boson Seen at LHC—Proof by Next Summer?")
"For the first time there was a case where we expected to [rule out] the
Higgs, and we weren't able to do so," said Tim Barklow, an experimental
physicist with the ATLAS Experiment who's based at Stanford University's SLAC
National Accelerator Laboratory.
A two-sigma finding translates to about a 95 percent chance that results are
not due to a statistical fluke.
While that might seem impressive, it falls short of the stringent five-sigma
level that high-energy physicists traditionally require for an official
discovery. Five sigma means there's a less than one in a million probability
that a finding is due to chance.
"We make these rules and impose them on ourselves because, when you are
exploring on the frontier, it is easy to fool yourself," said Michael Peskin, a
theoretical physicist also at SLAC.
(Related: "'God
Particle' May Be Five Distinct Particles, New Evidence Shows.")

Higgs Holds It All Together?
The Higgs boson is one of the final puzzle pieces required for a complete
understanding of the standard model of physics—the so-far successful theory that
explains how fundamental particles interact with the elementary forces of
nature.
The so-called God particle was proposed in the 1960s by Peter Higgs to
explain why some particles, such as quarks—building blocks of protons, among
other things—and electrons have mass, while others, such as the light-carrying
photon particle, do not.
Higgs's idea was that the universe is bathed in an invisible field similar to
a magnetic field. Every particle feels this field—now known as the Higgs
field—but to varying degrees.
If a particle can move through this field with little or no interaction,
there will be no drag, and that particle will have little or no mass.
Alternatively, if a particle interacts significantly with the Higgs field, it
will have a higher mass.
The idea of the Higgs field requires the acceptance of a related particle:
the Higgs boson.
According to the standard model, if the Higgs field didn't exist, the
universe would be a very different place, said SLAC's Peskin, who isn't involved
in the LHC experiments.
"It would be very difficult to form atoms," Peskin said. "So our orderly
world, where matter is made of atoms, and electrons form chemical bonds—we
wouldn't have that if we did not have the Higgs field."
In other words: no galaxies, no stars, no planets, no life on Earth.
"Nature Is Really Nasty" to Higgs Boson Seekers
Buried beneath the French-Swiss border, the Large Hadron Collider is
essentially a 17-mile-long (27-kilometer-long) oval tunnel. Inside,
counter-rotating beams of protons are boosted to nearly the speed of light using
an electric field before being magnetically steered into collisions.
Exotic fundamental particles—some of which likely haven't existed since the
early moments after the big bang—are created in the high-energy crashes. But the
odd particles hang around for only fractions of a second before decaying into
other particles. (Also see "Strange
Particle Created; May Rewrite How Matter's Made.")

Theory predicts that the Higgs boson's existence is too fleeting to be
recorded by LHC instruments, but physicists think they can confirm its creation
if they can spot the particles it decays into. (Explore a Higgs boson
interactive.)
Now that the Higgs boson—or something like it—has been confirmed to indeed
have a mass of around 125 to 126 GeV, scientists have a better idea why the God
particle has avoided detection for so long.
This mass is just high enough to be out of reach of earlier, lower-energy
particle accelerators, such as the LHC's predecessor, the Large
Electron-Positron Collider, which could probe to only about 115 GeV.
At the same time 125 GeV is not so massive that it produces decay products so
unusual that their detection would be clear proof of the Higgs's existence.
In reality the Higgs appears to transform into relatively commonplace decay
products such as quarks, which are produced by the millions at the LHC.
"It just so happens that nature is really nasty to us, and the range that
we've narrowed [the Higgs] down to is the range that makes it most difficult to
find," ALICE's Evans said.
Despite the challenges, ATLAS's Gianotti said, it's fortunate that the Higgs
has the mass that it does.
"It's very nice for the standard-model Higgs boson to be at that mass," she
said. "Because at that mass we can measure it at the LHC in a huge number of
final states. So, thanks Nature."
Going for the Gold
While the search for the Higgs was a primary motivation for the construction
of the LHC, activity at the world's largest atom smasher won't stop if the Higgs
boson is confirmed.
For one thing, the two teams will be busy preparing the data they presented
today for submission to scientific journals for publication.
There are also lingering questions that will require years of follow-up work,
such as what the God particle's "decay channels" are—that is, what particles the
Higgs transforms into as it sheds energy.
The answer to that question will allow physicists to determine whether the
particle they have discovered is the one predicted from theory or something more
exotic, Columbia University's Tuts said.
"Does it really smell and taste like a Higgs? Is it being produced at the
rate that a standard model Higgs would predict? That's the work that's going to
go on over the course of this year at least," he added.
Something the public often forgets, too, is that ATLAS and CMS make up only
two of the LHC's four major experiments, Evans said. The other two—the LHCb
Collaboration and Evan's own ALICE—are investigating other physics arcana, such
as why the universe contains so little antimatter.
(See "Antimatter
Atoms Trapped for First Time—'A Big Deal.'")

"If you want to compare it to the Olympics, finding the Higgs would be like
winning just one gold medal," Evans said.
"I'm sure most countries would like to win more than one gold medal. And I
think CERN is going to deliver a lot more gold medals over the years."

IN PICTURES Discovery of the 'God Particle' July 5,
2012
FROM THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR WEBSITE: VIEW 9 PHOTOS OF
THE DISCOVERY AT:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Photo-Galleries/In-Pictures/Discovery-of-the-God-Particle





Chief News Editor: Sol
Jose Vanzi

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