New Results Indicate Particle Discovered at CERN (Last Year) is a Higgs Boson

[Hissyspit]

Source: CERN Press Release

New results indicate that particle discovered at CERN is a Higgs boson

14 Mar 2013

Geneva, 14 March 2013. At the Moriond Conference today, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN1’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presented preliminary new results that further elucidate the particle discovered last year. Having analysed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they find that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Finding the answer to this question will take time.

Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles, and its quantum properties. For example, a Higgs boson is postulated to have no spin, and in the Standard Model its parity – a measure of how its mirror image behaves – should be positive. CMS and ATLAS have compared a number of options for the spin-parity of this particle, and these all prefer no spin and positive parity. This, coupled with the measured interactions of the new particle with other particles, strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson.

“The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is.” said CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela.



Read more: http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2013/03/new-results-indicate-particle-discovered-cern-higgs-boson

[dipsydoodle]

1. CERN scientists say particle is no "super-Higgs"

(Reuters) - Physicists who found a new elementary particle last year said on Wednesday it looked like a basic Higgs boson rather than any "super-Higgs" that some cosmologists had hoped might open up more exotic secrets of the universe.

"It does look like the SM (Standard Model) Higgs boson," said physicist Brian Petersen of Atlas, one of two research teams working in parallel on the Higgs project at CERN in Switzerland.

His assertion, on a slide presentation to a conference at CERN and posted on the Internet, was echoed by the other group. "So far, it is looking like an SM Higgs boson," said slides from Colin Bernet of CMS.

The two groups work separately and without comparing findings to ensure their conclusions are reached independently.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-rop-science-higgs-idUKBRE92C1BU20130313

[another_liberal]

2. Damn!

I was holding out for it to be a Swonk Fussla. What a disappointment!

[sendero]

3. Am I the only one...

... that thinks discovering these particles is like peeling one more layer off of a nearly infinite onion?

I realize there is probably some kind of practical value to this knowledge but I'm at a loss in understanding what it is.

[EOTE]

4. It's likely that the Higgs Boson is the last layer of that onion.

The Higgs Boson is what gives particles their mass. It appears as if the HB is simply energy that has congealed, I guess, and formed the most elementary of particles. As for the practical value, there's an incredible amount of it. The discoveries at CERN will tell us where the universe has been, where it's going and what's possible. It could also show that we live in a reality of many dimensions, yet only seem to have access to three spatial dimensions and the dimension of time. How cool is it to be living in this time?

[leftynyc]

6. I find this fascinating

I don't really understand it all but finding the proof that something can create mass is a huge scientific step in understanding the universe - that much I understand.

[Hissyspit]

5. Why does it have to have practical value?

[caseymoz]

7. Things they discovered in quantum mechanics

. . . thirty years ago are having unforeseen applications now, especially in microprocessors, materials and chemistry. If you talk on a cellphone, you're using technology that was discovered in a quantum mechanics experiment twenty years ago.

Here are some examples

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120122102917.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110705150932.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080611161041.htm[link:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080611161041.htm|


Remember when they split the broadcast station bands? Instead of one channel, you have three? And now we have high definition television? That's due to discoveries in the 80s and 90s.

They're going to replace a lot of electrical circuits with photonic circuits, at least in computing and communications. Instead of electricity, they'll use light to run things. You could immediately see why that's better. It's almost impossible to short out a light beam. They're able to do this because of discoveries made in experiments more than a decade ago.

When they make the discovery, they have to design experiments to make the next discoveries. When they design those experiments, they pioneer technology that will many times be used to apply the previous discovery. So of course, you won't see the application, nobody does, not until scientists begin to design experiments to make the next discoveries possible.

You don't know what the surprise may be. An unforeseen discovery might just solve our energy problems. That's just an example, I'm not predicting that. By definition, unforeseen is something I can't predict.

[Gore1FL]

8. More and more layers is a possibility.

But I have enjoyed watching the onion get peeled, and can point to my career in ITS as a direct benefit of removing the layers.

Here are better examples though,

> When Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity, no one could have predicted that understanding it was the key to making GPS systems work.
> When they smashed particles and discovered Americium, no one immediately foresaw it's use as a critical component in smoke detectors.
> Dmitri Mendeleev predicted its existence of Germanium. We use it now to make transistors
> Using the theory of gravity, we discovered Neptune.

As we better understand things, we learn to manipulate them to our advantage.

One of my favorite stories, which is apparently false* (sigh), still makes a relevant observation. In the story the prime minister asks Faraday of what use his electromagnetic rotary devices could be. Faraday replied "I don't know, but you will find a way to tax it."

* http://www.snopes.com/quotes/faraday.asp