Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Physics - Existence of Higgs Boson Confirmed


The so-called "God Particle" found in 2012 by the Large Hadron Collider LHC in Geneva has been confirmed to be the predicted Higgs Boson. This implies a verification of the standard model of particle physics and is good news for everybody interested in the structure of matter. Instead of telling it in my own words, I decided to quote an intelligible and well-written article on this subject and which has been published today, June 24, in the Escapist journal:

It had already been established that the particle discovered in 2012 matched the Higgs Boson with respect to its mass, its lack of spin, and its rapid decay into pairs of photons. However, one key attribute remained unconfirmed: whether it gave mass to fermions, a group of particles that includes quarks and leptons.

Editor's Note: Leptons are particles like electrons and positrons that are known to possess very little mass.

Analyzing data from the Large Hadron Collider, MIT physics professor Marcus Klute and a team of colleagues confirmed with a strong degree of confidence that the 2012 particle meets the final criteria.

"We made this big discovery back in 2012 - we confirmed the particle, its [lack of] spin, everything was consistent," says Klute. "What was missing were the fermions."

But they are missing no more, thanks to the work of his team. "Our findings confirm the presence of the Standard Model Boson," Klute says. "Establishing a property of the Standard Model is big news itself."

The Higgs Boson was first theorized in 1964, and its monumental discovery was announced at CERN in 2012. The importance of the Higgs Boson to our understanding of particle physics is so great that it launched a 40 year search to prove its existence, which culminated in the construction of the LHC, the world's largest particle accelerator. Mainstream media refer to the boson as the "God particle," a name disliked by many physicists, including Higgs himself.


More scientific data for the above quoted findings of Higgs Boson research are available from the following source:
Evidence for the direct decay of the 125 GeV Higgs boson to fermions

It should be noted that a scientific report had already been submitted on February 25 and was finally published two days ago on June 22, 2014. For those practically engaged in particle physics, the quoted results should therefore not come as a total surprise. However, many enthusiasts all over the world are still eager to learn more about it.




No comments: