Higgs boson has been found. Scientists 99.999% sure

By Tom
in Science News & Discussion

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Tom

Posted
Posted
The historic announcement came in a progress report from the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator.

Professor John Womersley, chief executive of the Science and technology Facilities Council, told reporters at a briefing in London: "They have discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson.

"Discovery is the important word. That is confirmed. It's a momentous day for science."

Scientists say it is a 5 sigma result which means they are 99.999% sure they have found a new particle.

Finding the Higgs plugs a gaping hole in the Standard Model, the theory that describes all the particles, forces and interactions that make up the universe.

If the particle was shown not to exist, it would have meant tearing up the Standard Model and going back to the drawing board.

The Cern laboratory appeared to have let slip its biggest breakthrough in a generation after appearing to announce the discovery of a new particle in an online video overnight.

In the short film accidentally published by the lab yesterday spokesman Joe Incandela is seen describing how physicists at the Large Hadron Collider had "observed a new particle".

Today scientists gathered in Geneva to announce the findings. Among the audience was Peter Higgs, the Edinburgh professor who first proposed the existence of the mysterious particle almost 50 years ago.

Rumours had been rife that scientists hunting the Higgs were to announce today's finding but the video appeared to confirm the finding of a particle matching its description hours before it was confirmed.

Although their results are said to be strong enough to claim an official discovery, the scientists will avoid doing so because they remain unsure whether the particle they have found is indeed the Higgs.

Cern spokesman James Gillies said the video was one of several filmed to cover every eventuality and did not directly relate to today's announcement.

The Internet has been rife with rumours of a discovery ever since CERN, the European nuclear research facility, announced it would hold a press conference today with the leaders of its two gigantic experiments, ATLAS and CMS.

Sources have told the Telegraph that ATLAS will today announce a 5-sigma signal and CMS will announce a 4.9-sigma signal of a new particle with a mass of 126.5 GigaelectronVolts (GeV) and 125.2 GeV respectively - a result which falls slap bang in the middle of the tough-to-explore region where many physicists were adamant the Higgs was hiding.

The results being announced today definitively point to a new particle or particles which fit the description of a Higgs Boson, but further research will be needed to characterise it properly.

The Higgs boson is the final piece of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, a theoretical model which describes the fundamental particles and forces that control our Universe.

It was first theorised in the 1960s by Edinburgh-based physicist Peter Higgs, amongst others, and is credited for giving all other particles mass. But until now, it has proved impossible to pin down.

To do so, scientists use the LHC to smash together protons at almost the speed of light and scour the debris for traces of particles that sprang into existence for just a fraction of a second before disintegrating.

Sources have told the Telegraph that ATLAS will today announce a 5-sigma signal and CMS will announce a 4.9-sigma signal of a new particle with a mass which matches many physicists' idea of a Higgs Boson.

An ATLAS researcher said there was "no question" the two detectors are seeing the same thing, adding: "A lot of bets are going to be settled up [today]?.

?After so many years preparing and searching, it?s really amazing to see a clear signal emerge,? a CMS Higgs physicist added.

?This is the sort of thing that makes me cry,? said an ATLAS Higgs physicist. ?It's the kind of crying that accompanies winning something or being overwhelmed with happiness. Human thought and ingenuity have continually created and discovered, but this outdoes them all."

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

99.999% is good enough for me. :p

Mentor

Colin McGregor

Posted
Posted

scientists use the LHC to smash together protons at almost the speed of light and scour the debris for traces of particles that sprang into existence for just a fraction of a second before disintegrating.

does this mean it proves the big bang theory and disproves the 7 day?

Grand Master

BoredBozirini

Posted
Posted

does this mean it proves the big bang theory and disproves the 7 day?

No, but anyone with a sane head should know that the 7 day "theory" is a bunch of bullocks anyways (by direct consequences of a literal interpretation of it).

Community Regular

Daveski

Posted
Posted

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

99.999% is good enough for me. :p

Hmmm ... that 0.0001% is still bugging me though. Seriously, I'm not totally sold on this. Mind you, I don't know jack about subatomic physics.

Community Regular

Daveski

Posted
Posted

does this mean it proves the big bang theory and disproves the 7 day?

The Big Bang Theory is true, I've seen it on the telly. As for the 7 day theory, wasn't it actually 6 days & then [insert deity of your choice] took the day off? LOL

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • Bypassed Windows 11 shows surprising stability on ancient, completely unsupported hardware

      By +Warwagon · Posted

      With the current hardware prices Microsoft should lift the restriction. Then if you have the correct TPM then allow you to use X feature, if you don't have the correct TPM then don't but still actually let you run windows. 11. With a disclaimer during install that X features would be unavailable.
    • Meta is reusing old DDR4 RAM in its servers instead of buying new hardware

      By C:Amie · Posted

      It's good for recycling of course. But commence inflation of a second hand RAM bubble and price gouging on DDR 4 inventory in 3... 2... 1...
    • Bypassed Windows 11 shows surprising stability on ancient, completely unsupported hardware

      By hellowalkman · Posted

      Bypassed Windows 11 shows surprising stability on ancient, completely unsupported hardware by Sayan Sen When Windows 11 was first released, one of the most complained-about issues with the new desktop Microsoft OS was its higher system requirements, which pushed many relatively modern and powerful processors and devices onto the officially unsupported list. Thankfully, they have not been updated again for the base OS, though systems require four times the memory and storage if they want to run AI-powered apps and features. As such, Windows 11 technically runs on 4GB of memory, and there is no imposed restriction on the generation of memory it supports. Speaking of memory, prices are extremely high nowadays for hardware, especially DDR5 and DDR4 kits due to the current silicon shortage, and there are also reports of it affecting DDR2 as well, and it might only be a matter of time before even DDR1 gets affected. Before that could happen, an enthusiast took an ancient DDR1-based system and decided to try out Windows 11 on it to see how well the modern OS would fare on such hardware. The system runs an outdated graphics card interface standard based on AGP, or Advanced Graphics Port, called AGP 3.0 or AGP8x. AGP was essentially succeeded by the modern PCI Express (PCIe) bus standard. The user behind the experiment is retro hardware enthusiast Omores, who built the system around an ASRock ConRoe865PE motherboard based on Intel's i865PE chipset from way back in 2003, around the time when AGP was still in fashion. What made this board special back in the day was its unusual support for newer Core 2 Duo and even Core 2 Quad processors while still retaining older DDR1 memory support and an AGP8X graphics slot, making it an ideal bridge or link between two vastly different generations. Powering the machine was Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600 alongside 3GB of DDR1 RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP graphics card, one of the final and most capable GPUs released for the aging AGP interface. While installing Windows 11 itself was relatively easy by bypassing Microsoft's hardware checks, getting the graphics card fully functional proved to be some challenge. Microsoft had quietly dropped native AGP support after the earliest releases of Windows 10, meaning newer versions of Windows no longer include the necessary Graphics Address Remapping Table (GART) drivers required for proper AGP acceleration. Without them, AGP graphics cards typically boot up, though with limited functionality, and can often throw a Code 43 error in Device Manager. To work around the limitation, Omores extracted Intel's legacy AGP440 SYS driver from an early Windows 10 release and paired it with a modified INF file so Windows 11 would correctly recognize the chipset. Following this and combined with AMD's final 64-bit Catalyst AGP drivers from 2012, the Radeon HD 4650 was able to operate with full AGP 8X acceleration intact. The result was said to be surprisingly usable for hardware that is over two decades old. Hardware-accelerated H.264 video playback worked correctly and benefited apps like Firefox, while legacy applications and games ran without major graphical issues. The system also successfully completed the 3DMark 2001 benchmark, although performance naturally lagged behind what the same hardware achieves under Windows 7, which is significantly lighter than Windows 11. There was, however, one unavoidable limitation as Microsoft's Windows 11 version 24H2 introduces a mandatory SSE4.2 CPU instruction requirement that cannot be bypassed through installer modifications or registry tweaks. Since no AGP-era processor supports SSE4.2, Windows 11 version 23H2 effectively becomes the final release capable of running on such systems. Regardless, it is still a very cool feat and quite fascinating to see just how stable Windows 11 turned out to be on such unfamiliar hardware. Source: Omores (Patreon) via O_MORES (Reddit)
    • Meta is reusing old DDR4 RAM in its servers instead of buying new hardware

      By +Good Bot, Bad Bot · Posted

      That will only really help other players that are also responsible for creating the problem.
    • Meta is reusing old DDR4 RAM in its servers instead of buying new hardware

      By Nick H. · Posted

      Well, it's good to know that they have found a workaround to a problem that they helped create, I guess...

  • Recent Achievements

    • Reacting Well
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      BA the Curmudgeon earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Conversation Starter
      rosiecharles earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • First Post
      KMilenkoski1202 earned a badge
      First Post

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      538
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      266
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      151
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      98
    5. 5
      macoman
      66
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!