God Particle...

[antineoETC]

At some point in time the earth will not be able to support life do we just roll over and die, or do we invest in the future of mankind and head for the stars....

What you mean warp drive and other sci-fi means of traversing the vast distances between the stars in an instant? I think you are being a tad overoptimistic regarding the possible technological spin-offs from the LHC project. I doubt they will even find conclusive evidence for the so-called "Higgs Boson", belief in which has become quasi-religious among certain scientific circles.

[byteresistor]

What you mean warp drive and other sci-fi means of traversing the vast distances between the stars in an instant?

As Lawrence Krauss said:
"Warp drive from star trek is possible. We just don't know how to make it work."

[survivor]

Big Bang test successful, says CERN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 743205.cms

GENEVA: The world's largest atom smasher has set a record for high-energy collisions by crashing two proton beams at three times more force than ever before in their attempt to create mini-versions of the Big Bang that led to the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago.

The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider directed the beams into each other on Tuesday as part of its ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces. The collisions start a new era of science for researchers working on the machine below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

Scientists at a control room at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, broke into applause when the first successful collisions were recorded. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links.

The experiment at CERN, creating a record for the energy of particle conditions, will allow researchers to examine the nature of matter and the origin of stars and planets.

"This is a major breakthrough. We are going where nobody has been before. We have opened a new territory for physics," Oliver Buchmueller, one of the key figures on the $9.4 billion project, told Reuters.

The collisions took place at a record total collision energy of 7 billion billion electron volts (eV) and at a nano-fraction of a second slower than the speed of light in CERN's 27 km (16.8 mile) Large Hadron Collider (LHC), about a hundred metres (330 feet) below the Swiss-French border.

The experiment was delayed for a few hours by a couple of technical glitches with the power supply and an over-sensitive magnet safety system. This led the physicists to suspend the mega-power particle collisions, the focus of the world's largest scientific experiment. After the problems arose as beams were injected into the collider in the early morning, CERN officials were quick to dismiss any suggestion that it was a repeat of a major incident in September 2008 that seriously damaged parts of the experiment and delayed the full launch of the project until now.

During the coming months and years, CERN scientists expect the project to lift the veil on some of the mysteries of the cosmos -- how matter was converted to mass after the fireball of the Big Bang and what is the dark, or invisible, matter that makes up an estimated 25 percent of the universe.

[survivor]

US, Indian scientists question Big Bang theory

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 761894.cms

NEW DELHI: An Indian and an American scientist have questioned the Big Bang theory, saying it does not serve as a viable explanation for the origin of the universe.

The research papers of Ashwini Kumar Lal of India's Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation and Rhawn Joseph of Northern California's Brain Research Laboratory have been accepted for publication in the April issue of the peer-reviewed Harvard journal, Journal of Cosmology.

The research papers come even as scientists at Geneva's European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) are in the midst of experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recreating conditions of the beginning of the universe.

"The two scientific papers cast shadows of suspicion over the efficacy of the Big Bang model. The scientific community may have to ponder afresh over the issue relating to the origin of the universe," Lal told IANS here.

He also noted that CERN scientists "are trying to jigsaw a theory which fits the conditions of the Big Bang model".

"The Big Bang is said to have occurred 13.75 billion years. But there is evidence, as I have written in my paper, that there were fully formed distant galaxies that must have already been billions of years old at the time," he added.

In his paper "Big Bang? A Critical Review", Lal says: "There is a growing body of evidence which demonstrates the Universe could not have begun with a Big Bang 13.75 billion years ago.

"Indeed, the day may come when it is determined there never was a Big Bang and cosmologists of the future will only gaze back in wonder at how anyone could have believed in a creation event which was refuted by so much contradictory evidence," he adds.

According to the paper, one of the "acid tests" relating to the validity of the Big Bang model is the "detection of remnants of gravity waves from the earliest epoch of the universe.

"Existence of gravitational wave background, as predicted by Einstein in 1916 in his general theory of relativity, is expected from the violent early moments of the Big Bang much like the cosmic microwave background that fills the sky with radio waves from the early universe," Lal says.

While the microwave background presumably originated 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the gravitational wave background purportedly comes directly from events in the first minute after the Big Bang, the scientist says.

"The cataclysmic Big Bang is believed to have created a flood of gravitational waves; ripples in the fabric of space-time. These gravitational waves should still fill the universe.

"However, presumably they are at a very feeble strength and cannot be detected by conventional astronomical tools. Nevertheless, they should carry information about the universe as it was in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang.

"If these waves cannot be detected, this challenges the Big Bang," Lal maintains.

He also points out that lots of metal has been detected in distant quasars and galaxies, "and if distance is related to age, this means that many of the oldest, most distant galaxies are metal rich; and this defies the predictions of the Big Bang".

This means there are "fully formed distant galaxies that must have already been billions of years old over 13 billion years ago, which would make them older than the Big Bang", Lal contends.

Lal closely studied 38 research works in the areas of astrophysics, physics and cosmology before writing his paper. This is his third paper on the subject to be published in a foreign journal. The others are Origin of Life (Astrophysics and Space Science, October 2008) and Searching for Life on Habitable Planets and Moons (Journal of Cosmology, February 2010). He also has to his credit some 30 research papers published in Indian journals.

[survivor]

Has elusive God particle finally been discovered?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 165297.cms

Has the Holy Grail of physics finally been found? The internet is abuzz with rumours that the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, US, has found the Higgs boson — nicknamed the ‘God particle’ — after Tommaso Dorigo, a physicist at the University of Padua in Italy wrote in his blog that there has been talk coming out of the Illinois laboratory that the Higgs has been discovered.

The Higgs boson, believed to give all other particles in the universe their mass, is called the ‘God particle’, because scientists believe finding it — or even proving that it exists — can help explain how the universe came into being.

In ‘‘Rumors about a light Higgs’’, a post on Science20.com, Dorigo says: ‘‘It reached my ear, from two different, possibly independent sources, that an experiment at the Tevatron is about to release some evidence of a light Higgs boson signal. Some say a three-sigma effect, others do not make explicit claims but talk of a unexpected result.’’

Dorigo added that while he could work through the research of Fermilab researchers to try and nail down the rumour, it would be ‘‘too much work — while wild speculation is more fun!”

The search for Higgs Boson made headlines across the world in 2008 when the Geneva-based CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) was preparing to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (the biggest particle accelerator in the world).

In May, 2010, Fermilab scientists analysing data from the Tevatron claimed to have found the “toe of God”. Up to that point, physicists had thought an equal amount of matter and anti-matter was created from the Big Bang, and could never figure out why they hadn’t cancelled each other out and why there was anything left at all.

According to the buzz on internet forums, more will be known about the Higgs boson “discovery” later this month, when FermiLab scientists present their findings at the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which opens in Paris on July 22.

[survivor]

Scientists trash reports of 'God particle' discovery

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home ... 176694.cms

LONDON: Rumours that the Higgs boson - sometimes called the 'God particle' - has been detected by the Tevatron particle accelerator have been denied.

The Tevatron is a circular particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory or Fermilab, Illnois, US and is the second highest energy particle collider in the world after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The Higgs boson has appeared in several works of fiction in popular culture, whose suspected existence is being determined by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.

A spokesman for the Fermilab told the Telegraph: "The rumour of evidence for the Higgs boson is just that: a rumour, with no factual basis. Beyond that, we don't comment on rumours."

Earlier, the lab's Twitter feed said: "Let's settle this: the rumours spread by one fame-seeking blogger are just rumors. That's it."

The rumours had been flying around the internet since a physicist and blogger, Tommaso Dorigo of the University of Padua, said in a blog post that he had heard "two different, possibly independent sources" claiming that an experiment at the Tevatron had found convincing evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson.

However, Stefan Söldner-Rembold, a spokesman for the Dzero experiment at Tevatron and a professor of physics at Manchester University, said: "Tommaso Dorigo's blog is not a reliable source and is in no way supported by us."

"We will have new and exciting results from our SM Higgs searches at ICHEP [the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which begins in Paris next week], but no three-sigma evidence. More data are needed for that."

The Higgs boson is the last of the particles posited by the standard model of particle physics still to be found. It is said to explain why other particles have mass.

The Fermilab began work in 1983. In 1995 it was responsible for detecting the "top quark" that had been posited by quantum theory.

It was the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in history until the creation of the LHC at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), near Geneva.

The LHC is eventually expected to render it obsolete and Tevatron had been scheduled to shut down next year.

However, as the LHC project has suffered time-overruns, Tevatron is expected to remain competitive until 2014, and discussions over keeping it running until 2014 are underway.

There is a certain amount of friendly rivalry between the two laboratories.

[survivor]

'God particle' hints possibly found
http://news.ca.msn.com/world/god-partic ... ibly-found

Hints of the last undiscovered particle in the Standard Model of Physics may have been detected by two separate experiments at the world's biggest particle accelerator.

Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider have glimpsed signals that could point to the existence of the Higgs boson — nicknamed the "god particle" by 1988 Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman — an elusive subatomic particle theorized to impart mass to other particles.

"We saw some tantalizing hints today," said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director-general of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, Tuesday, after the results of experiments known as ATLAS and CMS were presented at a public lecture. The ATLAS collaboration includes a number of Canadian scientists.

Both experiments, which involve about 5000 scientists altogether, showed signals for a mass between 115 and 130 GeV — the lower end of the range scanned by the scientists — that could indicate the presence of a new particle.

The researchers have now all but ruled out the possibility (with 99 per cent confidence) that the Higgs boson has a mass between 128 and 525 GeV.

However, the researchers warned that not enough data has been collected to make statistically sure that the apparent "Higgs boson" signals they saw are not due to fluctuations in background signals caused by other particles and processes. Heuer warned that the results are preliminary, as they involve very small numbers of signals.

"Please be prudent," he said. "We have not found it yet. We have not excluded it. Stay tuned for next year."

In 2012, scientists at the two experiments expect to collect four times the amount of data they collected in 2011, increasing the number of signals they see and reducing the statistical error significantly.

Fabiola Gianotti, spokeswoman for the ATLAS experiment, said that means the Higgs boson could be unambiguously discovered or ruled out by ATLAS in 2012.

How to hunt for Higgs

Inside the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS experiment collides protons, some of the building blocks of atoms, at an energy of 3500 GeV. The collisions are expected to produce Higgs bosons, which have an unknown mass.

Each proton is made up of smaller particles called quarks and gluons that can have a wide range of energies following the collisions. At that point, the particles coming out of the collision hit a detector, which measures their energies. Since they are travelling close to the speed of light, their energies and their masses are roughly equivalent.

Theory predicts how many Higgs bosons should be produced by a collision of a certain energy if it has a certain mass.

"Within 10 per cent, we know how many of them should be and how many our detector should have seen," said William Trischuk, a University of Toronto physicist involved in the ATLAS experiment.

Higgs bosons are extremely short-lived and decay before they can ever be detected. However, when they decay, a number of slightly longer-lived particles are expected to be produced. Those in turn decay into particles that can be detected.

"It's a detective game," said Trischuk, director of the Institute of Particle Physics, which supports and promotes research in the field across Canada.

Based on the particles detected, the researchers need to reconstruct the decay sequence and look for pairs of particles whose combined masses add up to the same number more often than might otherwise be expected.

"That's the harbinger that there's some new particle," Trischuk said. "If there's a Higgs boson there, we would get more at one particular mass than the average or than just random quark collisions."

Those are the types of signals that researchers have seen so far that hint at the existence of the Higgs boson at lower masses or energies.

Several different decay mechanisms — and therefore decay products — are possible.

"There are half a dozen or eight different ways we're looking for the Higgs boson in each of two experiments," Trischuk said. "And in some sense, it's the conspiracy of all of these things working together that gives us the confidence [in the results]."

The Canadian members of ATLAS are all dedicated for looking at one of those particular "channels" of decay. They saw a slight signal, but it was not the biggest one detected.

"It's not the poster child for the tantalizing hint today," Trischuk said.

He said researchers will continue to look at all channels and all energies, even the ones that have so far been "ruled out," to ensure they don't miss anything.

"A year from now, we will have two or three times or maybe more data and we will be able to make unequivocal statements about it."

External Links

CERN

[survivor]

'God particle': New particle found, could be the Higgs boson, CERN scientists say
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home ... 669433.cms

GENEVA/LONDON: Scientists at the CERN research centre have discovered a new subatomic particle that could be the elusive Higgs boson, which is believed to be crucial in the formation of the universe.

"I can confirm that a particle has been discovered that is consistent with the Higgs boson theory," said John Womersley, chief executive of the UK's Science & Technology Facilities Council, at an event in London.

Joe Incandela, spokesman for one of the two teams hunting for the Higgs particle told an audience at CERN near Geneva: "This is a preliminary result, but we think it's very strong and very solid."

The Higgs particle, although crucial for understanding how the universe was formed, remains theoretical. It explains how particles clumped together to form stars, planets and even life.

Without the Higgs particle, the particles that make up the universe would have remained like a soup, the theory goes.

It is the last undiscovered piece of the Standard Model that describes the fundamental make-up of the universe. The model is for physicists what the theory of evolution is for biologists.

What scientists don't yet know from the latest findings is whether the particle they have discovered is the Higgs boson as described by the Standard Model, a variant of the Higgs or an entirely new subatomic particle that could force a rethink on the fundamental structure of matter.

The last two possibilities are, in scientific terms, the most exciting.

_______________________________________________________
Report says; Evidence of God particle found
http://news.ca.msn.com/world/evidence-o ... le-found-1

GENEVA - Physicists say they have all but proven that the "God particle" exists. They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.

Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could restructure the understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight.

The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton's discovery: It was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what it is and can put that knowledge to further use.

The focus of the excitement is the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle long sought by physicists.

Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, say that they have compiled vast amounts of data that show the footprint and shadow of the particle, even though it has never actually been glimpsed.

But two independent teams of physicists are cautious after decades of work and billions of dollars spent. They don't plan to use the word "discovery." They say they will come as close as possible to a "eureka" announcement without overstating their findings.

"I agree that any reasonable outside observer would say, 'It looks like a discovery,'" said British theoretical physicist John Ellis, a professor at King's College London who has worked at CERN since the 1970s. "We've discovered something which is consistent with being a Higgs."

CERN's atom smasher, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss-French border, has been creating high-energy collisions of protons to investigate dark matter, antimatter and the creation of the universe, which many theorize occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.

The phrase "God particle," coined by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, is used by laymen, not physicists, more as an explanation for how the subatomic universe works than how it all started.

Rob Roser, who leads the search for the Higgs boson at the Fermilab in Chicago, said: "Particle physicists have a very high standard for what it takes to be a discovery," and he thinks it is a hair's breadth away. Roser compared the results that scientists will announce Wednesday to finding the fossilized imprint of a dinosaur: "You see the footprints and the shadow of the object, but you don't actually see it."

Fermilab, whose competing atom smasher reported its final results Monday after shutting down last year, said its data doesn't settle the question of the Higgs boson, but it came tantalizingly close.

"It's a real cliffhanger," said Gregorio Bernardi, a physicist at the University of Paris who helped lead one of the main experiments at Fermilab. He cited "strong indications of the production and decay of Higgs bosons" in some of their observations.

Fermilab theorist Joseph Lykken said the Higgs boson "gets at the centre, for some physicists, of why the universe is here in the first place."

Though an impenetrable concept to many, the Higgs boson has until now been just that — a concept intended to explain a riddle: How were subatomic particles, such as electrons, protons and neutrons, themselves formed? What gives them their mass?

The answer came in a theory first proposed by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and others in the 1960s. It envisioned an energy field where particles interact with a key particle, the Higgs boson.

The idea is that other particles attract Higgs bosons and the more they attract, the bigger their mass will be. Some liken the effect to a ubiquitous Higgs snowfield that affects other particles travelling through it depending on whether they are wearing, metaphorically speaking, skis, snowshoes or just shoes.

Officially, CERN is presenting its evidence this week at a physics conference in Australia but plans to accompany the announcement with meetings in Geneva. The two teams, known as ATLAS and CMS, then plan to publicly unveil more data on the Higgs boson at physics meetings in October and December. Each of the teams involves thousands of people working independently to ensure accuracy.

The scientific threshold for discovery is high. Scientists have to show with complex formulas that there's a less than 1 in 1.7 million chance that the findings are a statistical fluke. With two independent experiments showing that there's less than 1 in 16,000 chance of being wrong, it's a matter of how their work is put together.

Scientists with access to the new CERN data say it shows with a high degree of certainty that the Higgs boson may already have been glimpsed, and that by unofficially combining the separate results from ATLAS and CMS it can be argued that a discovery is near. Ellis says at least one physicist-blogger has done just that in a credible way.

CERN spokesman James Gillies said Monday that he would be "very cautious" about unofficial combinations of ATLAS and CMS data.

"Combining the data from two experiments is a complex task, which is why it takes time, and why no combination will be presented on Wednesday." he said.

But if the calculations are indeed correct, said John Guinon, a longtime physics professor at the University of California at Davis and author of the book "The Higgs Hunter's Guide," then it is fair to say that "in some sense we have reached the mountaintop."

Sean M. Carroll, a California Institute of Technology physicist flying to Geneva for Wednesday's announcement, said that if both ATLAS and CMS have independently reached these high thresholds on the Higgs boson, then "only the most curmudgeonly will not believe that they have found it."___Borenstein reported from Washington.

[survivor]

Pakistan shuns its only Nobel laureate - physicist linked to discovery of 'God particle'

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes ... le-ahmadis

ISLAMABAD: The pioneering work of Abdus Salam, Pakistan's only Nobel laureate, helped lead to the apparent discovery of the subatomic " God particle" last week. But the late physicist is no hero at home, where his name has been stricken from school textbooks.

Praise within Pakistan for Salam, who also guided the early stages of the country's nuclear program, faded decades ago as Muslim fundamentalists gained power. He belonged to the Ahmadi sect, which has been persecuted by the government and targeted by Taliban militants who view its members as heretics
Their plight along with that of Pakistan's other religious minorities, such as Shiite Muslims, Christians and Hindus has deepened in recent years as hardline interpretations of Islam have gained ground and militants have stepped up attacks against groups they oppose. Most Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims.

Salam, a child prodigy born in 1926 in what was to become Pakistan after the partition of British-controlled India, won more than a dozen international prizes and honors. In 1979, he was co-winner of the Nobel Prize for his work on the so-called Standard Model of particle physics, which theorizes how fundamental forces govern the overall dynamics of the universe. He died in 1996.

Salam and Steven Weinberg, with whom he shared the Nobel Prize, independently predicted the existence of a subatomic particle now called the Higgs boson, named after a British physicist who theorized that it endowed other particles with mass, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist who once worked with Salam. It is also known as the "God particle" because its existence is vitally important toward understanding the early evolution of the universe.

Physicists in Switzerland stoked worldwide excitement Wednesday when they announced they have all but proven the particle's existence. This was done using the world's largest atom smasher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, near Geneva.

"This would be a great vindication of Salam's work and the Standard Model as a whole," said Khurshid Hasanain, chairman of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Salam wielded significant influence in Pakistan as the chief scientific adviser to the president, helping to set up the country's space agency and institute for nuclear science and technology. Salam also assisted in the early stages of Pakistan's effort to build a nuclear bomb, which it eventually tested in 1998.

Salam's life, along with the fate of the 3 million other Ahmadis in Pakistan, drastically changed in 1974 when parliament amended the constitution to declare that members of the sect were not considered Muslims under Pakistani law.

Ahmadis believe their spiritual leader, Hadrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who died in 1908, was a prophet of God a position rejected by the government in response to a mass movement led by Pakistan's major Islamic parties. Islam considers Muhammad the last prophet and those who subsequently declared themselves prophets as heretics.

All Pakistani passport applicants must sign a section saying the Ahmadi faith's founder was an "impostor" and his followers are "non-Muslims." Ahmadis are prevented by law in Pakistan to "pose" as Muslims, declare their faith publicly, call their places of worship mosques or perform the Muslim call to prayer. They can be punished with prison and even death.

Salam resigned from his government post in protest following the 1974 constitutional amendment and eventually moved to Europe to pursue his work. In Italy, he created a center for theoretical physics to help physicists from the developing world.

[Yohan]

Pakistan shuns its only Nobel laureate - physicist linked to discovery of 'God particle'

The guy was not a Muslim, so why should Pakistan honor him? Secondly, Allah is not a particle. It is blasphemous to claim so, and Insult Islam. It is a punishable offence. Allah would love to see such a person beheaded for calling him a particle.

[tsrajesh]

if i remember it right, it was not "God" particle literally.. I believe Higgs referred to it as that elusive "Goddamn particle" and the name stuck. A particle heavier than the nucleus and very small life...

[survivor]

God Particle is being sought after. Allah created this Universe using His atom. LHC is due for a new start up this spring.
A new convert to Islam reports about how the great scientists
search for Allah's source of power: http://edwod.livejournal.com/2730.html

When normal people convert to cults such as islam, they practically become subnormal intellectually. Meanwhile,, they are intelligent enough to decide to use non-muslim find outs as their alibi in order to convince themselves about the idiocy they are told to believe in. A small example, the computer was invented by nonmuslims that has been extensively used by muslims to do evil things, proselyte and spread their idiocy around the world. But, I recently heard an idiot musim student in London Ontario saying that Alla told non-muslims to find software, because he didn't want his muslim followers to have a headache by thinking too much over how to invent things!! Voilaaaaa.. what a convenient answer..
If non-muslims convert to islam it is only for two reasons. The first one is, their ignorance about the true islam and mohammad.
The other reason being, they want to enjoy the status and carnal priveleges given to men in islam.

[survivor]

Higgs boson 'God particle' found, confirm CERN scientists

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/higgs ... /1088122/2

Scientists today said they are confident that the subatomic particle discovered last year by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is indeed a Higgs boson or the elusive 'God particle'.

It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model, The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said.

"The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is," said CERN physicist Joe Incandela.

At the Moriond Conference in Italy today, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC presented preliminary new results that further elucidate the particle discovered last year.

Having analysed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they found that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles.

Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles, and its quantum properties.

For example, a Higgs boson is postulated to have no spin, and in the Standard Model its parity - a measure of how its mirror image behaves - should be positive.

CMS and ATLAS have compared a number of options for the spin-parity of this particle, and these all prefer no spin and positive parity.

This, coupled with the measured interactions of the new particle with other particles, strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson.

"The beautiful new results represent a huge effort by many dedicated people. They point to the new particle having the spin-parity of a Higgs boson as in the Standard Model. We are now well started on the measurement programme in the Higgs

sector," ATLAS spokesperson Dave Charlton said in a statement.

To determine if this is the Standard Model Higgs boson, the collaborations have, for example, to measure precisely the

rate at which the boson decays into other particles and compare the results to the predictions.

The detection of the boson is a very rare event - it takes around 1 trillion (1012) proton-proton collisions for each observed events.

[survivor]

Higgs Boson, the so-called 'God particle, could spell trouble for universe...
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/higgs ... e/1079386/

A potential Higgs Boson particle discovered last year could spell doom for our universe,researchers claim.

The mass of the so called 'God particle', uncovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, is a key ingredient in a calculation that signals the future of space and time.

"This calculation tells you that many tens of billions of years from now there will be a catastrophe," Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia said.

"It may be the universe we live in is inherently unstable,and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out," added Lykken, a collaborator on one of the LHC's experiments.

The sub-atomic particle is a manifestation of an energy field pervading the universe called the Higgs field, which is thought to explain why particles have mass, 'LiveScience' reported.

Physicists at the LHC announced in July 2012 that they had discovered a new particle whose properties strongly suggest it is the Higgs Boson.

To confirm the particle's identity for sure, more data are needed. But many scientists say they're betting it is the Higgs.

'This discovery to me was personally astounding,' said I Joseph Kroll, a University of Pennsylvania physicist.

"To me, the Higgs was sort of, it might be there, it might not. The fact that it's there is really a tremendous accomplishment," Kroll said.

And finding the Higgs, if it's truly been found, not only confirms the theory about how particles get mass, but it allows scientists to make new calculations that were not possible before the particle's properties were known.

If that particle really is the Higgs, its mass turns out to be just about what's needed to make the universe fundamentally unstable, in a way that would cause it to end catastrophically in the far future.

Because the Higgs field is thought to be everywhere, so it affects the vacuum of empty space-time in the universe.

'The mass of the Higgs is related to how stable the vacuum is,' said Christopher Hill, a physicist at Ohio State University.

Scientists said if the Higgs mass were just a few per cent different, the universe would not be doomed.

Any comments????

[survivor]

Dark matter hints detected in space station experiment:-
http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/dark ... experiment

A $2 billion cosmic ray detector on the International Space Station has found the footprint of something that could be dark matter, the mysterious substance that is believed to hold the cosmos together but has never been directly observed, scientists say.

But the first results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, known by its acronym AMS, are almost as enigmatic as dark matter itself.

They show evidence of new physics phenomena that could be the strange and unknown dark matter or could be energy that originates from pulsars, scientists at the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva announced Wednesday.

The results from the detector are significant, because dark matter is thought to make up about a quarter of all the matter in the universe. Unravelling the mystery of dark matter could help scientists better understand the composition of our universe and, more particularly, what holds galaxies together.
Nobel-winning physicist Samuel Ting, who leads the team, told colleagues at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, that he expects a more conclusive answer within months about this "unexpected new phenomena."

The seven tonne detector, which was sent into space two years ago and has a 0.91-metre magnet ring at its core, is transmitting the data to CERN on the Swiss-French border, where it is being analyzed.

Search continues until 2020

The instrument will search for antimatter and dark matter for the rest of the life of the space station — at least until 2020 — transmitting data to an international team of 600 scientists based in Geneva that is led by Ting, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The findings Wednesday are based on seeing an excess of positrons — positively charged subatomic particles.

Since the highly accurate AMS magnetic detector began studying cosmic ray particles in space, it has found about 400,000 positrons whose surging energies indicate they might have been created when particles of dark matter collided and destroyed each other.

"It is this level of precision that will allow us to tell whether our current positron observation has a dark matter or pulsar origin," Ting said.

Other scientists praised the results and looked forward to more.

"This is an 80-year-old detective story and we are getting close to the end," said University of Chicago physicist Michael Turner, one of the giants in the field of dark matter. "This is a tantalizing clue and further results from AMS could finish the story."

External Links

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
CERN press release