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Search for elusive particle is narrowed
Source: Agencies |
November 25, 2011, Friday
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CERN physicists have moved the focus of their search for the Higgs boson, the particle many think gave the universe form after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, to a narrow band on the mass spectrum.
Science bloggers close to the 21-nation European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva are suggesting it might be clear by mid-December that the boson does not exist and some other mechanism will have to be sought to explain how elementary particles acquired mass at the birth of the cosmos.
James Gillies, of CERN, said: "The higher mass region has now been virtually ruled out, but the Higgs could still be anywhere in the lower 114 to 141 gigaelectronvolt range."
Physicists now say the Higgs, if it exists, should be found around 120GeV, while independent British researcher Philip Gibbs goes for 140GeV.
The GeV is used in physics to quantify particle energy fields. Searches for the Higgs in CERN's Large Hadron Collider and other laboratories have ranged up to 476GeV.
Results from analysis up to the end of June at the LHC, which smashes together millions of particles per second at a tiny fraction below the speed of light, were presented at a conference in Paris last week, but these slipped by almost unnoticed in the particle physics community, which has been more focused recently on an Italian research center's claim to have recorded neutrinos moving faster than light.
CERN's ruling council meets in three weeks and any concrete sign of the Higgs - whose existence was postulated four decades ago by British scientist Peter Higgs - would be reported during that session.
But CERN physicist and blogger Pauline Gagnon said the low mass range was also where it would be more difficult to see.
The particle is part of the 30-year-old "standard model" of particle physics that seeks to explain how the universe works at its most basic level, but it is almost the only element of the model whose existence had not yet been proven.
Science bloggers close to the 21-nation European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva are suggesting it might be clear by mid-December that the boson does not exist and some other mechanism will have to be sought to explain how elementary particles acquired mass at the birth of the cosmos.
James Gillies, of CERN, said: "The higher mass region has now been virtually ruled out, but the Higgs could still be anywhere in the lower 114 to 141 gigaelectronvolt range."
Physicists now say the Higgs, if it exists, should be found around 120GeV, while independent British researcher Philip Gibbs goes for 140GeV.
The GeV is used in physics to quantify particle energy fields. Searches for the Higgs in CERN's Large Hadron Collider and other laboratories have ranged up to 476GeV.
Results from analysis up to the end of June at the LHC, which smashes together millions of particles per second at a tiny fraction below the speed of light, were presented at a conference in Paris last week, but these slipped by almost unnoticed in the particle physics community, which has been more focused recently on an Italian research center's claim to have recorded neutrinos moving faster than light.
CERN's ruling council meets in three weeks and any concrete sign of the Higgs - whose existence was postulated four decades ago by British scientist Peter Higgs - would be reported during that session.
But CERN physicist and blogger Pauline Gagnon said the low mass range was also where it would be more difficult to see.
The particle is part of the 30-year-old "standard model" of particle physics that seeks to explain how the universe works at its most basic level, but it is almost the only element of the model whose existence had not yet been proven.
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