A leaked internal memo from physicists working at the large Hadron Collider near Geneva the long-awaited theoretical particle reports a touch of the Higgs boson, which could make or break of the standard model of elementary particle physics.
The preliminary observation, which is still in the year under review was in an anonymous comment on physicist Peter Woit blog, April 21 booked "not even wrong." Four physicists claim that ATLAS, one of the LHC general-purpose particle hunting decays experiments, a Higgs particle in two high-energy photons caught - but with a much higher speed than the standard model predicts.
"The result of this is the first definite observation of physics beyond the standard model," the note says. "Exciting new physics, including new particles, can be expected to find in the very near future."
The word of CERN, which operates the LHC, is that the leaked note is no official result, and were still uncertain by converting thousands, which forms the rest of the ATLAS cooperation.
"It is way, way too early to say if it something in him or not," spokesman James Gillies said CERN. "The vast majority of these notes get ripped off before they always see the light of day."
Pointed out by a member of the ATLAS cooperation, which wanted to remain anonymous that unexpected signals in the data that is fairly common, and turn out to be due to errors or biases that went uncorrected. The signal is much more likely, be a fluke than anything else.
The mood in the physics of blogosphere is mixed between cautious excitement and denial-of outright.
"It may well be a false alarm... or it could be the discovery of the century... stay tuned," wrote a blogger jester on the Résonaances, a blog that covers particle theory of Paris called.
But degree students of Sarah Kavassalis on the language of bad physics switches, until there is a official statement from the cooperation, or even one of the co-authors, which is only gossip. Don't excited. "Ernst."
This is not the first time a Higgs rumor the physics community, either has swept. A possible discovery came from the CDF experiment at the Tevatron, a particle accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois, is 2010. blogger and physicist Tommaso Dorigo in July, that CDF should this new signal have seen, if it is really there.
If the Higgs it or not, the paper is real. Physicist with access to the paper say it begins, "It is the purpose of this note to report the first experimental observation in the large Hadron Collider (LHC) the Higgs particle."
"Exciting it matter if it's true," said Gillies.
The standard model of particle physics is widely as a theory of almost everything, explain most of what we know about the matter with 17 subatomic particles. But only 16 have seen these particles. The holdout is the Higgs boson, to explain that, in the 1960s why matter has mass was introduced.
Search for the Higgs is one of the most important objectives of the LHC, a 17 km long underground tunnel near the border to France and the Switzerland. Protons to this tunnel at speed of light travel close to smash into each other and new particles, the only available at very high energy to create.
These particles decay quickly into a flood of other, more mundane particles such as photons. Detectors such as ATLAS and its twin, CMS, called can trace the masses and paths, which happens this ordinary particles, and their ways, to what to reconstruct in the collision.
The authors of the note, under the direction of physicist Sau lan Wu of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, say that ATLAS saw two photons with energies up to 115 Gigaelectronvolts (GeV) Add. This is the sort of thing you might expect, if the Higgs boson would have a mass of 115 GeV divided by the speed of light squared. (Da link between energy and mass of Einstein's famous E = mc2 equation, particles, often speaking physicist interchangeable of mass and energy.) For comparison: a Proton has a mass of about 0.9 GeV/c2.)
Charming is this mass. The LHC predecessor, large electron-positron Collider or LEP, can have also seen a hint of a Higgs with the same mass in the year 2000 only weeks before LEP was shut down to make room for the LHC. Wu was also the possible discovery.
But if something really saw ATLAS, it is the researchers report, something very unusual. If an experiment of the standard model produced version of the Higgs boson, will disintegrate only a 100,000 of them in two photons. The signal to ATLAS is ahead 30-times larger than the standard model says, i.e. it produces more Higgs boson than expected 30-time or 30: 100, 000 of them turned into two photons.
The alleged signal would be a signature of supersymmetry, an extension of the standard model in which each particle has a "super affiliates", which differs only in a quantum mechanical property called spin. Or it could be a particle that goes beyond the standard model as a whole. A candidate is a hypothetical particle called radio that is associated with extra dimensions.
"Everyone would like to see what takes us beyond the standard model," said Gillies. "For a standard model of Higgs at the LHC... from a physics point of view it would be quite something boring." "There are a lot of hope and expectation that we can find something beyond the standard model."
In the meantime, the LHC is forward into new territory charge. Around midnight Swiss time April 22 record of the LHC a new beam intensity. Energy is scheduled on the current level to run the Collider, which is only half of what able, by the end of 2012.
That should be enough time to say that the standard model of Higgs exists or not, ATLAS said cooperation member of Gustaaf Brooijmans Columbia University at a press conference in February.
He said "With the 2012 run added, in principle, that we that we can exclude the existence of the Higgs boson of the full course believe if he does not exist,". "If it exists we would see a small signal." "Then what is the mass, what kind of signal we see is it."
Image: The ATLAS experiment at CERN.
See also:
Lisa is based a wired science post loose in Seattle, Washington.Follow @ Astrolisa and @ Wiredscience on Twitter.
No comments:
Post a Comment