Posted on 04/10/2007 8:48:56 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
From the masses and interactions of other particles that we know exist, physicists calculated that the Higgs is most likely to have a mass (or energy) of around 80 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). If particle accelerators smash particles together at that energy or higher, it should be possible to make one. This is what members of the Electroweak Working Group at CERN were doing for the 5 years until LEP (the Large Electron Positron Collider) closed down last year. Since then they've been sifting through the data they gathered--and found nothing. They rule out most possible masses for the Higgs, including the ones considered most likely. "It's more likely than not that there is no Higgs," says working group member John Swain of Northeastern University in Boston... [L]ast year researchers from another group at LEP claimed they had found the Higgs... [b]ut they later admitted to having botched their calculations in the heat of the moment... Frank Wilczek, a particle physics theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology... says he'll start to get uncomfortable if the Higgs doesn't show up by about 130 GeV. "Then I would have a good long think," he says... David Plane, head of LEP's OPAL experiment, is still certain that the Higgs will eventually be found. "It's just at a higher energy than we're sensitive to." ... "There is nothing remotely as plausible or compelling to replace it," says Wilczek. Supersymmetry, which predicts every particle is paired with a heavier partner, is a popular idea. But LEP's results are even worse news for this theory, as it predicts several Higgs particles. The lightest one would have turned up at even lower energies, and couldn't exist above 130 GeV.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Desperately seeking the Higgs boson
Manila Times | Sunday, January 14, 2007 | Rony V. Diaz
Posted on 01/15/2007 4:57:53 AM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1767741/posts
Physicists Announce Possible Violation of Standard Model of Particle Physics
Source: Brookhaven National Laboratory
Published: February 8, 2001 Author: News Release
Posted on 02/09/2001 12:40:58 PST by Nebullis
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a8455da1307.htm
Experiments to look for the Higgs
Jane Butt
Last updated 28 October 2003
http://www.pparc.ac.uk/ps/bbs/bbs_mass_he.asp
The Higgs boson has not been observed yet but it is now a major target for collider projects. We don’t know what the mass of the Higgs is, but it is possible to infer its value from measurements of the masses of other particles such as the W and Z bosons and top quark. It is thought to be at least 114 GeV, and the last data from the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP) provided hints that it could be around 115 GeV.
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To understand the Higgs mechanism, imagine that a room full of physicists quietly chattering is like space filled only with the Higgs field.... |
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... a well known scientist walks in, creating a disturbance as he moves across the room, and attracting a cluster of admirers with each step ... |
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... this increases his resistance to movement, in other words, he acquires mass, just like a particle moving through the Higgs field ... |
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... if a rumour crosses the room ... |
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... it creates the same kind of clustering, but this time among the scientists themselves. In this analogy, these clusters are the Higgs particles. |
It's somehwere under all the shielding...
Mmmm...
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