Space
CERN is Certain About God Particle
Brooke Miller
First Posted: Jul 04, 2012 07:16 AM EDT
The European Organisation for nuclear research had finally solved the greatest mystery of science by discovering the new subatomic particle the elusive Higgs boson or 'God Particle'.
"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists.
Two independent teams at CERN said on Wednesday they have both "observed" a new subatomic particle, a boson. The leaders of the two teams Joe Incandela, head of CMS with 2,100 scientists, and Fabiola Gianotti, head of ATLAS with 3,000 scientists each presented in complicated scientific terms what was essentially extremely strong evidence of a new particle at a packed auditorium in CERN.
Heuer called it "most probably a Higgs boson, but we have to find out what kind of Higgs boson it is."
"As a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd. "We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson."
The scientists are 99.999% sure of the newly found particle because it is a 5 sigma result. The scientists had been conducting this with loads of determination as it believed to be a manifestation of an invisible field, the Higgs field that passes through the entire universe.
According to the theory, Higgs boson is responsible for the existence of stars, planets and life by giving mass to the elementary particles, the building blocks of universe. All this gave rise to the name "God Particle."
An important ingredient in the standard model of particle physics, the discovery Higgs boson is will set a strong platform in resolving the fundamental questions about the formation universe.
CERN's atom smasher, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the Swiss-French border, has been creating high-energy collisions of protons to investigate dark matter, anti-matter and the creation of the universe, which many theorise occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.
To come up with strong evidence, the scientists used the LHC to smash together protons that match to the speed of light and scour the remains for traces of particles that sprang into existence for just a fraction of a second before disintegrating.
ATLAS will announce a 5 sigma signal and CMS will announce a 4.9 sigma signal of a new particle with a mass of 126.5 GigaelectronVolts and 125.2 GigaelectronVolts.
A CMS Higgs physicist added, "After so many years preparing and searching, it's really amazing to see a clear signal emerge."
ATLAS Higgs physicist said, "This is the sort of thing that makes me cry. It's the kind of crying that accompanies winning something or being overwhelmed with happiness. Human thought and ingenuity have continually created and discovered, but this outdoes them all."
The Higgs boson, which until now has been a theoretical particle, is seen as the key to our understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight. The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton's discovery of it: Gravity was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what a boson is and can put that knowledge to further use.
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NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone
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First Posted: Jul 04, 2012 07:16 AM EDT
The European Organisation for nuclear research had finally solved the greatest mystery of science by discovering the new subatomic particle the elusive Higgs boson or 'God Particle'.
"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists.
Two independent teams at CERN said on Wednesday they have both "observed" a new subatomic particle, a boson. The leaders of the two teams Joe Incandela, head of CMS with 2,100 scientists, and Fabiola Gianotti, head of ATLAS with 3,000 scientists each presented in complicated scientific terms what was essentially extremely strong evidence of a new particle at a packed auditorium in CERN.
Heuer called it "most probably a Higgs boson, but we have to find out what kind of Higgs boson it is."
"As a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd. "We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson."
The scientists are 99.999% sure of the newly found particle because it is a 5 sigma result. The scientists had been conducting this with loads of determination as it believed to be a manifestation of an invisible field, the Higgs field that passes through the entire universe.
According to the theory, Higgs boson is responsible for the existence of stars, planets and life by giving mass to the elementary particles, the building blocks of universe. All this gave rise to the name "God Particle."
An important ingredient in the standard model of particle physics, the discovery Higgs boson is will set a strong platform in resolving the fundamental questions about the formation universe.
CERN's atom smasher, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the Swiss-French border, has been creating high-energy collisions of protons to investigate dark matter, anti-matter and the creation of the universe, which many theorise occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.
To come up with strong evidence, the scientists used the LHC to smash together protons that match to the speed of light and scour the remains for traces of particles that sprang into existence for just a fraction of a second before disintegrating.
ATLAS will announce a 5 sigma signal and CMS will announce a 4.9 sigma signal of a new particle with a mass of 126.5 GigaelectronVolts and 125.2 GigaelectronVolts.
A CMS Higgs physicist added, "After so many years preparing and searching, it's really amazing to see a clear signal emerge."
ATLAS Higgs physicist said, "This is the sort of thing that makes me cry. It's the kind of crying that accompanies winning something or being overwhelmed with happiness. Human thought and ingenuity have continually created and discovered, but this outdoes them all."
The Higgs boson, which until now has been a theoretical particle, is seen as the key to our understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight. The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton's discovery of it: Gravity was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what a boson is and can put that knowledge to further use.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone