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Gary Clement’s week in review
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CERN scientists discover new particle consistent with the Higgs boson
Scientists at the CERN research centre have found a new subatomic particle that could be the Higgs boson, the basic building block of the universe.
“I can confirm that a particle has been discovered that is consistent with the Higgs boson theory,” said John Womersley, chief executive of Britain’s Science & Technology Facilities Council, at an event in London.
The Higgs particle, although crucial for understanding how the universe was formed, remains theoretical. It explains how particles clumped together to form stars, planets and even life.
Without the Higgs particle, the particles that make up the universe would have remained like a soup, the theory goes. (Image: CERN via AFP / Getty Images)
Higgs boson-hunting CERN scientists closing in on Big Bang particle
Physicists investigating the make-up of the universe are closing in on the elusive particle thought to have been key to turning debris from the Big Bang into stars, planets and finally life
The search for the Higgs Boson: Inside the Large Hadron Collider
As the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) discuses the Higgs Boson, or “God Particle,” we take a look inside the massive atom-smashing machine known as the Large Hadron Collider, which is at the heart of the discovery.
Higgs Boson: What is it, and why is everyone so excited about the ‘God Particle?’
What’s happening on Tuesday? The only thing that is known for certain about a seminar on Tuesday at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which runs the massive atom-smashing machine known as the Large Hadron Collider, is that there will not be a definitive announcement about the existence of the Higgs Boson, the so-called God Particle whose discovery would complete the Standard Model of particle physics, and explain why stuff has mass.
Rolf-Dieter Heuer, CERN’s director general, said as much in an invitation to the meeting, promising “significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the Higgs.”
But with the release of results from two different experiments in search of the God Particle, excitement and rumours are growing about a scientific discovery that would rival any in living memory. (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Changing our world, faster than light
The world as we know it is on the brink of disintegration, on the verge of dissolution. No, I’m not talking about the collapse of the Euro, of international finance, of the Western economies, of the democratic future, of the unipolar moment, of the American dream, of French banks, of Greece as a going concern, of Europe as an idea, of Pax Americana.
I am talking about something far more important. Which is why it made only the back pages of your newspaper, if it made it at all. Scientists at CERN (the European high-energy physics consortium) have announced the discovery of a particle that can travel faster than light.
Neutrinos fired 454 miles from a supercollider outside Geneva to an underground laboratory in Gran Sasso, Italy, took less time (60 nanoseconds less) than light to get there. Or so the physicists think. Or so they measured. Or so they have concluded after repeatedly checking for every possible artifact and experimental error.
The implications of such a discovery are so mind boggling, however, that these same scientists immediately requested that other labs around the world try to replicate the experiment. Something must have been wrong to account for a result that, if we know anything about the universe, is impossible.
And that’s the problem. It has to be impossible because, if not, everything we know about the universe is wrong. (INFN/AFP/Getty Images)
