Higgs Boson Discovered

[ZenGum]

There's a 5-in-10 million chance that this is a fluke. That was enough for physicists to declare that the Higgs boson – the world's most-wanted particle – has been discovered. Rapturous applause, whistles and cheers filled the auditorium at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland.

Almost 50 years after its existence was first predicted, the breakthrough means that the standard model of particle physics, which explains all known particles and the forces that act upon them, is now complete.

A Higgs boson with a mass of around 125 to 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) was seen separately by the twin CMS and ATLAS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, each with a confidence level of 5 sigma, or standard deviations, the heads of the experiments announced today at CERN.

Even by particle physicists' strict standards, that's statistically significant enough to count as a particle discovery.

This is why yo mamma so fat.

[ZenGum]

Although to be strictly accurate, I should have said New Boson discovered; probably Higgs.

The physicists were a little reticent to call the discovery a "Higgs boson", preferring to call it the discovery of a "new boson".

That's because they don't yet know its properties – and so can't confirm how similar it is to the Higgs of the standard model. "It's the beginning of a long journey to investigate all the properties of this particle," says Heuer.

One property that needs to be investigated is the particle's spin: the standard model says it should have a value of zero; a more exotic boson would give a value of two. Oliver Buchmueller of CMS says the LHC should be able to determine the new boson's spin by the end of 2012.

[DanaC]

Physicists write shit headlines.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Physicists write shit headlines.

Celebrations as Higgs bosom is finally discovered

Why would parents name their baby girl "Higgs" ?
But nevertheless, it's something that happens to every teenybopper (eventually).

[Griff]

Ah, the welcome flowering of womanhood!

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

Celebrations as Higgs bosom is finally discovered

Why would parents name their baby girl "Higgs" ?
But nevertheless, it's something that happens to every teenybopper (eventually).

Har!



Though I was thinking more of the imperative to caveat everything so thoroughly :p

[wolf]

Well, this should thorough change the face of the next season of The Big Bang Theory.

[chrisinhouston]

Seems funny that they nicknamed it "The God Particle" when Peter Higgs who it was named after was an atheist!

[chrisinhouston]

And what I want to know is will it improve my cell phone reception?

[ZenGum]

If I ever get my hands on the moron who came up with that "god particle" BS, I'll high five him in the face.

With a brick.

[Cyber Wolf]

Now that they've got that all figured out, these exceptional minds need to get started on the Hoverboard.

[DanaC]

Fuck the hoverboard, where's my flying car? And I mean a proper flying car that levitates in place when needed.

[jimhelm]

you mean like this one?

[DanaC]

Yeah....just like that one.


Cock.

[Lamplighter]

There's always a spoil-sport in the crowd. This one is named Harvey Newman at Cal Tech...

Discovery News
Fri Jul 6, 2012 07:55 AM ET

What If the New Particle Isn't the Higgs Boson?
There are subtle indications that the particle may not, in fact, be the Higgs.

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they've discovered
a new "Higgs-like" particle: a bundle of energy that has most of the trappings
of the long-sought Higgs boson. They're not naming the newcomer outright,
because there are subtle indications that the particle may not, in fact,
be the plain old Higgs itself, but rather a close doppelganger.<snip>

The Standard Model is incomplete, Newman said, because it doesn't account
for the particles that make up 84 percent of the matter in the universe:
the invisible substance known as dark matter. It also fails to incorporate gravity.<snip>
The leading theory that places the Standard Model within a more powerful,
all-encompassing framework is called supersymmetry, or SUSY.<snip>

When generated in a particle collider like the LHC, each Higgs-like boson
would be expected to decay into a unique set of lighter particles.
It appears that the newfound particle at the LHC decayed in a way
that the run-of-the-mill Standard Model Higgs would not have, the physicists said
— although more data is needed before they'll know for certain what kind of Higgs they've got.
But if the particle is, in fact, a more exotic Higgs, then it could be a SUSY Higgs,
or at least a non-Standard Model Higgs. And this would be the first
discovery of physics beyond the Standard Model.