I’m not the one saying it—CERN is: Higgs Within Reach: Our Understanding of the Universe Is About to Change... Scientists may have finally found the so-called “God Particle” (or at least what we expect to see from the decay of a Higgs boson), which is part of a theory originally proposed by physicist Peter Higgs in the 1960s.
However, scientists still don’t know exactly which Higgs boson it could be. The results presented today are preliminary, as data from 2012 is still being analyzed. If you’re still wondering, What exactly is the Higgs boson? (It’s the particle that gives mass to other particles, like quarks and electrons.) John Ellis, a theoretical physicist, answers the question in this video.
From the press release:
“We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”
“The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks.”
“It’s hard not to get excited by these results,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “ We stated last year that in 2012 we would either find a new Higgs-like particle or exclude the existence of the Standard Model Higgs. With all the necessary caution, it looks to me that we are at a branching point: the observation of this new particle indicates the path for the future towards a more detailed understanding of what we’re seeing in the data.”
It’s hard not to get excited about these results! While the positive identification of the new particle’s characteristics will take significant time and data, whatever form the Higgs particle takes, our understanding of the fundamental structure of matter is about to make a major leap forward.
And for the most skeptical among us, Martin Archer, a physicist at Imperial College in London, told CNN: “If we don’t see it, it actually means that the universe at the most fundamental level is more complicated than we thought, and therefore maybe the way we’ve been attacking physics isn’t right.“
