Cern To Announce Higgs @ Lhc

[Turtle]

CERN to announce Higgs boson observation at LHC @ extremetech.com

 

December 12, 2011

 

 

Tomorrow, at 9am EST, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland are expected to announce, with fairly strong certainty, that they have observed the Higgs boson “God” particle at a mass-energy of 125 GeV.

 

For just over a week, rumors have been rife that observations with 2.5 to 3.5 sigma certainty (96% to 99.9%) have been made. For it to be declared an actual discovery, however, a sigma level of five has to be recorded. A score on the higher end of the range, towards 3.5, would definitely have particle physicists, engineers, scientists, and philosophers jumping around excitedly, though. Perhaps more importantly, LHC has two detectors at the end of its 17-mile-long particle acceleration tunnel, and both have reportedly seen the Higgs boson: the CMS detector with sigma 2.5, and ATLAS with sigma 3.5. Thanks to the matching observations, “we’re moving very close to a conclusion in the first few months of next year,” said Oliver Buchmeuller, a senior member of the CMS detector team.

...

[dduckwessel]

Very exciting and I don't fully understand it all! I hope all goes well.

[phision]

Although the announcement will almost certainly have a certainty of 3.5 sigma, I'm not so sure it will be announcement that everyone is expecting! We'll see soon though!

[Deepwater6]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16116236

 

A brief Q and A on it.

[Guest MacPhee]

Very exciting and I don't fully understand it all! I hope all goes well.

 

I too am baffled. Deepwater6 in #4, gives an interesting link, which contains this quote:

 

"The Higgs field allows particles to obtain their mass. This is not unlike a field of snow, in which trudging through impedes progress - your shoes interacting with the snow particles, slows you down."

 

But doesn't this slowing down, result from the snow particles, being static, unmoving? They keep still, and so cause friction against your moving shoes. This makes your shoes get slowed down.

 

Then shouldn't the Higgs particle also be unmoving. A kind of "static" particle. Which stops other things moving. But doesn't itself move.

 

If it is, I can't see how the LHC is supposed to detect it. The LHC seems designed to detect particles rushing through the machine, from one end to the other, at ultra-high, near light-speed. Won't the stationary Higgs get left behind at the starting post. And so be invisible to the detectors?

[belovelife]

i still think its the matter / anti/matter pairs tha annialate and reacreate being perpendiculat to the plane of observation

[Rade]

CERN reports that Higgs Boson has NOT been found conclusively at this time:

 

http://public.web.cern.ch/press/pressreleases/Releases2011/PR25.11E.html