Tomorrow, at 9am EST, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland are expected to announce, with fairly strong certainty, that they have observed the Higgs boson "God" particle at a mass-energy of 125 GeV.
For just over a week, rumors have been rife that observations with 2.5 to 3.5 sigma certainty (96% to 99.9%) have been made. For it to be declared an actual discovery, however, a sigma level of five has to be recorded. A score on the higher end of the range, towards 3.5, would definitely have particle physicists, engineers, scientists, and philosophers jumping around excitedly, though. Perhaps more importantly, LHC has two detectors at the end of its 17-mile-long particle acceleration tunnel, and both have reportedly seen the Higgs boson: the CMS detector with sigma 2.5, and ATLAS with sigma 3.5. Thanks to the matching observations, "we’re moving very close to a conclusion in the first few months of next year," said Oliver Buchmeuller, a senior member of the CMS detector team.
If the Higgs boson has been observed, its mass of 125 GeV will probably prove to be the most interesting factor. As you probably know, the Higgs boson is odd in that our Standard Model(Opens in a new window) of particle physics postulates that it exists -- and if it didn't exist, the whole Model would be faulty. This would be troublesome because, so far, the rest of the Model has stood up incredibly well to the onslaught of science. Finding the boson particle, then, is a relief, but not fundamentally world-changing -- unless its physical properties are "odd," and at 125 GeV, the boson could be very odd indeed. For details, hit up ViXra's blog(Opens in a new window), which is written by scientists far more intelligent than I. In short, 125 GeV would be interesting enough to require some rewriting of the physics books, but not so much that it would completely throw us off -- it would be perfect, as far as scientific discoveries go.
As for what the Higgs boson actually is, and more importantly what it does, you should read our very approachable explainer. While it's unlikely, there's also a possibility that tomorrow's press conference will be a a 3.5 sigma certainty announcement that the Higgs boson hasn't been found -- which would probably be even more exciting.
Update December 13 @ 9am EST: ATLAS has delivered its findings -- and it hasn't found the Higgs boson yet. Update December 13 @ 9:42am EST: CMS has delivered tis findings -- and alas, no Higgs boson. But its results do correlate with ATLAS -- if the God particle exists, it looks like it's in the low energy region (around 126 GeV)Tagged In
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