LHC’s Data Bump Discovery: A Wasted Effort?

A data bump that could have been a statistical fluke hints a new particle that generated a huge excitement for the particle physics researchers but recent results from the Large Hadron Collider reveal that the bum has gone away. This may mean that the hopes for the imminent discovery of a particle that might fundamentally reveal more information about the Universe will be put on hold.

Leader of Atlas experiment, David Charlton of Birmingham University, revealed that they were excited when the data bump was discovered but the latest results do not display the bump anymore. He also said that the bump may have been a remarkable coincidence that two separate LHC detectors, Atlas and CMS, picked up matching data bumps, Fortune reported.

Director of general CERN, Professor Fabiola Gianotti, who runs the LHC, emphasized the collider's technical success. She went on to explain that the superb performance of the LHC accelerator, experiments and computing bode, are extremely well for a detailed and comprehensive exploration of the new energy scale and significant progress in the understanding of fundamental physics.

Meanwhile, Professor Jon Butterworth from University College London who also works on the Atlas experiment said that he and his fellow researchers will start to work a lot harder in discovering a family of new particles which they believe must be out there. He continued to say that they have landed on a new island of physics and are scanning the landscape. If they do not see anything this year, that means there are no amazing new civilisations with huge cities and that there are no spectacular volcanoes out there that are seen with their first flyby, Nature reported.

The data bump had put thousands of scientists at Cern on the verge of one of the all-time biggest discoveries in science. However, despite LHC's revamped second run that hurled particles together with more energy than ever before, the bump disappeared. There was a disappointment but researchers know that irregularities like that may come and go.