Higgs boson •

CERN: Higgs Particle Hunters Are Wanted!

Nov 27, 2014 By Nathan Fortin 2 Comments

On Wednesday, a group of US and UK researchers involved in the ATLAS experiment announced they needed volunteers from all over the world to help them examine all 25.000 photos showing super-fast particles moving and dieing inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC is the world’s largest particles smasher and it was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research aka CERN. Its initial goal was to collide particles at super-speeds, make them explode and give birth to sub-particles that may help scientists decode the texture of the universe.

For many years, the LHC teams searched for a particular particle called the Higgs boson, or God’s particle. In 2013, LHC confirmed that such a particle was found, although global community was worried the sub-atomic experiments occurring at the Swiss–French border might create a set of mini black holes that would suck all Earth into them.

We are still here, so that didn’t happen. Two of the most important CERN experiments are the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) and the ATLAS experiment. Each experiment uses different methods and designs, but they share the same goals. For instance they both have searched for the Higs boson, and currently they in search of particles that could create dark matter.

Dark matter is an invisible texture that holds the Universe together and it can only be detected from its gravitational effects.

On November 20, CMS team has also made its Open Data Portal (ODP) available to the general public. ODP is a database containing information on real LHC particle collisions. CMS scientists said they made the infos public because they were hoping this would inspire and support more scientists, and even students or amateurs.

This week, ATLAS team of researchers launched another project called Higgs Hunters (they even have a site for it). Higgs Hunters needs on-line volunteers to help CERN researchers examine all the LHC particle collisions caught on camera. There are currently 25.000 photos to be closely examined.

Scientists say that volunteers can help them track the sub-atomic explosions caused by a dieing Higgs particle and the sub-particles emerging during the process. These sub-particles, scientists believe, will help mankind understand better the origins of the Universe.

“If anything discovering what happens when a Higgs boson ‘dies’ could be even more exciting than the original discovery that the Higgs boson exists made at CERN back in 2012. We want volunteers to help us go beyond the Higgs boson ‘barrier’ by examining pictures of these collisions and telling us what they see,”

said Professor Alan Barr lead author of the Higgs Hunters project. So, the hunting season is open and Higgs particle hunters are wanted.

Scientists at CERN Discover Two New Subatomic Particles

Nov 20, 2014 By Richard Carlisle Leave a Comment

Scientists from the largest atom smasher in the world said Wednesday that they’ve discovered two new subatomic particles. The particles were never before seen and are believed to be capable of widening our understanding of the Universe.

The newly discovered particles were already predicted to exist and they are baryons made up of three quarks held together by a strong force. Officials at the laboratory (known as CERN, by its French acronym) showed their discovery on Wednesday.

The new particles were found as a result of an experiment using the Large Hadron Collider from the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The recent discovery could reveal more about how things work farther than the “Standard Model” physics theory explaining the basic building blocks of matter.

Matthew Charles, a collaborator at CERN’s LPNHE Laboratory at Paris VI University said:

“Nature was kind and gave us two particles for the price of one,”

Scientists have been intentionally crushing protons in the 27 kilometers long tunnel on the Swiss-French border to see what they’re able to find out about the particles within the Universe and about the Universe itself. The recently discovered particles are six times bigger than other particles previously found.

The scientists studied the particles’ production rates, widths and several other details along the masses of the two new recently discovered particles.

CERN-based physicist, Patrick Koppenburg, said the study using data from 2011 to 2012 could help differentiate the Standard Model from anything new and unexpected discovered in the future.

“This is a very exciting result. Thanks to LHCb’s excellent hadron identification, which is unique among the LHC experiments, we were able to separate a very clean and strong signal from the background. It demonstrates once again the sensitivity and how precise the LHCb detector is,”

He said.

Many CERN scientists have also used the accelerator to discover the subatomic particle called Higgs boson in 2012. In absence of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, particles would not hold together and there would be an absence of matter. This discovery helped Peter Higgs win in 2013 the Nobel Prize in physics by proving his theories.

CERN produced Higgs Boson or techni-higgs particle?

Nov 9, 2014 By Anne-Marie Jackson 1 Comment

In a big revelation, a new study has claimed that the CERN particle found in 2013 might not be the Higgs Boson as earlier thought.

However, the scientists have agreed that the experiments performed during CERN produced a never seen new particle. But an international research team, on the other hand, has called the experiment’s findings as non conclusive, saying the particle was not indeed the Higgs particle.

Physicist Mads Toudal Frandsen said while it was true that the Higgs Boson particle offers good explanation about the data but there can be other explanations that too can provide this data from other particles.

Frandsen is an associate professor at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark.

He further suggested that the particle hence formed after the experiment might be renamed to techni-higgs particle, as it possessed some similarity to the Higgs particle.

The researchers, in their analysis, have not debunked the possibility of CERN’s discovery of the Higgs particle. According to them, there is possibility that the CERN experiment produced the Higgs particle but there was equal possibility that the formed particle just looks like it.

The researchers also expressed hope in finding the solution saying more data from CERN may help in ascertaining if it was a Higgs or a techni-higgs particle.

The study was detailed in the journal Physical Review D.

Particle Discovered by CERN Might not be Higgs Boson, Researchers Say

Nov 8, 2014 By Nathan Fortin 4 Comments

The scientific world was excited last year, when CERN announced that they had observed the Higgs particle with the help of their particle accelerator (the large Hadron Collider). Until then, the Higgs boson was referred to only in theory, because there was no direct evidence of its existence.

Only a year after the discovery, November 7, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, have received disturbing news about the Higgs Boson (which some have called the “god particle”). According to a new study, the particle they uncovered is not actually Higgs Boson, but one similar to it.

“The CERN data is generally taken as evidence that the particle is the Higgs particle. It is true that the Higgs particle can explain the data but there can be other explanations, we would also get this data from particles.” Mads Toudal Frandsen, particle physicists at the University of South Denmark

In case you didn’t know, the Higgs Boson is a sub-atomic particle which has yet to be practically discovered. Nevertheless, it has become the most essential particle of physics. In theory, it is the source of higgs field, a part of electromagnetic waves which provide atoms with mass. With the help of the Higgs field scientists have also learned more about gravity.

The new research claims that the Higgs Boson particle exists, but CERN researchers do not have it in their grasp. The question now is, if CERN doesn’t have the Higgs particle, then what type of particle have they discovered? Frandsen believes that the CERN team has actually found what could have been an LHC (Large Hadron Collider), also known as techni-higgs.

“A techni-higgs particle is not an elementary particle. Instead, it consists of so-called techni-quarks, which we believe are elementary. Techni-quarks may bind together in various ways to form, for instance, techni-higgs particles, while other combinations may form dark matter. We therefore expect to find several different particles at the LHC, all built by techni-quarks.” – Frandsen

According to Frandsen and his fellow researcher, the best way to settle the uncertainty is by running several experiments with the CERN LHC accelerator. Also, if CERN would be outfitted with a more powerful accelerator, scientists would be able to observe techni-quarks directly.

The study conducted by the University of Southern Denmark started after the two researchers heard claims made by other scientists, including particle physicist Thomas Ryttov, who believes that the Higgs particle is probably a composite of other, smaller subatomic particles.

Large Hadron Collider Uncovered Higgs Boson Fermions Decay Mechanism

Jun 24, 2014 By Anne-Marie Jackson 2 Comments

New physics research involving Kansas State University faculty members has helped shed light on how our universe works.

A recently published study in the journal Nature Physics reports scientists have found evidence that the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle proposed in 1964 and discovered in 2012 is the long sought-after particle responsible for giving mass to elementary particles.

Building on the full data collected in 2011 and 2012, part of which was used to identify the Higgs boson’s existence, researchers see evidence that the Higgs boson decays into fermions. This also was predicted in 1964 but not observed until after the Higgs boson was identified in 2012, Kaadze said.

The observation is key in reinforcing what is theorized about the Higgs boson and is a stepping stone to building on more extensive knowledge about how the universe works, Kaadze said. As a group of elementary particles, fermions form the matter while bosons act as force carriers between fermions. According to the standard model of particle physics, the interaction strength between the fermions and the Higgs field must be proportional to their mass.

The discovery of a new boson with a mass of approximately 125 GeV in 2012 at the LHC has heralded a new era in understanding the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking and possibly completing the standard model of particle physics.

Since the first observation in decays to gamma, WW and ZZ boson pairs, an extensive set of measurements of the mass and couplings to W and Z bosons as well as multiple tests of the spin-parity quantum numbers have revealed that the properties of the new boson are consistent with those of the long sought agent responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking.

An important open question is whether the new particle also couples to fermions and in particular to down-type fermions, since the current measurements mainly constrain the couplings to the up-type top quark. In this paper we report the combination of these two channels which results for the first time in strong evidence for the direct coupling of the 125 GeV Higgs boson to down-type fermions with an observed significance of 3.8 standard deviations when 4.4 are expected.

“In nature, there are two types of particles: fermions and bosons,” said Ketino “Keti” Kaadze, a research associate at Fermilab who in August is joining the faculty at Kansas State University’s physics department. “Fermions, quarks and leptons make up all the matter around us. Bosons are responsible for mediating interaction between the elementary particles.”

The CMS detector measures the energy and impulse of photons, electrons, muons and other charged particles with high precision. Different measuring instruments are arranged in tiers inside the 12,500-ton detector. 179 institutions worldwide are involved in the construction and operation of the CMS detector. The Swiss institutions are the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute, which jointly developed and constructed the CMS pixel detector.

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