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AP Rolf Heuer, Director-General of CERN, answers a journalist's question about the scientific seminar to deliver the latest update in the search for the Higgs boson in Meyrin near Geneva on Wednesday.
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AP British physicist Peter Higgs congratulates Fabiola Gianotti, ATLAS experiment spokesperson, after her results presentation during a scientific seminar to deliver the latest update in the search for the Higgs boson at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva on Wednesday -
AP Participants applaud after the presentation of the ATLAS experiments results during a scientific seminar to deliver the latest update in the search for the Higgs boson at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Meyrin near Geneva on Wednesday. -
AP A computer screen is pictured prior to a scientific seminar at CERN in Meyrin near Geneva on Wednesday. CERN's chief is claiming discovery of a new particle “consistent with the Higgs boson” known as the “God particle”. -
AP In this May 20, 2011 file photo, a physicist explains the ATLAS experiment on a board at the European Center for Nuclear Research, CERN, outside Geneva, Switzerland. The illustration shows what the long-presumed Higgs boson particle is thought to look like. -
AP A view of the LHC (large hadron collider) in its tunnel at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. File Photo
CERN physicists hail evidence of game-changing discovery of subatomic particle
Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smashing facility near here
claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle on Wednesday. They
found it to be “consistent” with the long-sought Higgs boson, popularly
known as the “God particle” that helps explain what gives size and shape
to all matter in the universe.
“We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics,” Rolf
Heuer, Director of the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), told
scientists amid cheers and standing ovation. “As a layman, I think we
did it,” he said. “We’ve a discovery. We’ve observed a new particle that
is consistent with a Higgs boson.”
The Higgs boson, which until now was a theoretical particle, is seen as
the key to understanding why matter has mass. It is mass that combines
with gravity to give an object weight. The idea is much like gravity and
Isaac Newton’s discovery of it. Gravity existed even before Newton
explained it. But now scientists see something much like the Higgs boson
and can put that knowledge to further use.
CERN’s atom smasher, the $10-billion Large Hadron Collider on the
Swiss-French border, has for years been creating high-energy collisions
of protons to investigate dark matter, antimatter and the creation of
the universe, which many theorise occurred in a massive explosion known
as the Big Bang.
Two independent teams at CERN said they had both “observed” a new
subatomic particle, a boson. Dr. Heuer called it “most probably a Higgs
boson, but we have to find out what kind of Higgs boson it is.”
Asked whether the find is a discovery, he answered: “As a layman, I
think we have it. But as a scientist, I have to say, “’What do we
have?’”
The leaders of the two CERN teams, Joe Incandela, head of CMS with 2,100
scientists, and Fabiola Gianotti, head of ATLAS with 3,000 scientists,
each presented in complicated scientific terms what was essentially
extremely strong evidence of a new particle.
Dr. Incandela said it was too soon to say definitively whether what has
been discovered is indeed the “standard model” Higgs that Scottish
physicist Peter Higgs and others predicted in the 1960s. They did that
as part of a standard model theory of physics involving an energy field
where particles interact with a key particle, the Higgs boson. “The”
Higgs or “a” Higgs that was the question on Wednesday. “It is consistent
with a Higgs boson as is needed for the standard model,” Dr. Heuer
said. “We can only call it a Higgs boson, not the Higgs boson.”
“It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime,” he
said, calling it a huge achievement for the proton-smashing collider
built in a 27-km tunnel.
The stunning work elicited standing ovations and frequent applause at a
packed auditorium in CERN as Dr. Gianotti and Dr. Incandela each took
their turn. Dr. Incandela called it “a Higgs-like particle,” and said
“we know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found.”
“Thanks, nature!” Dr. Gianotti said to laughs, giving credit for the
discovery. Later, she said that “the standard model [of physics] is not
complete,” but that “the dream is to find an ultimate theory that
explains everything we are far from that.”
The phrase “God particle” was coined by Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Leon Lederman but is used by laymen, not physicists, as an easier way to
explain how the subatomic universe works and got started.
Dr. Incandela said the last undiscovered piece of the standard model
could be a variant of the Higgs that was predicted, or something else
that entirely changes the way scientists think of how matter is formed.
“This boson is a very profound thing we’ve found,” he said. “We’re
reaching into the fabric of the universe in a way we never have done
before. We’ve kind of completed one particle’s story... now, we’re way
out on the edge of exploration.”
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