Elusive Higgs Boson Particle Closer Than Ever, Scientists Say

Yahoo/LiveScience.com ^ | March 7, 2012 | Clara Moskowitz

[Free ThinkerNY]

New evidence makes it more likely than ever that 2012 will be the year physicists finally find the long-sought Higgs boson particle.

The particle has been predicted as the explanation for why all other particles have mass. It has earned the nickname the "God Particle," largely from the popular media, though scientists haven't warmed to the name.

Yet despite years of searching, scientists have yet to detect the Higgs boson directly.

Now physicists at the Tevatron particle accelerator at Illinois' Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory report hints in their data that suggest the particle may exist with a mass between 115 to 135 giga-electron volts, or GeV (for comparison, a proton has a mass of about 0.938 GeV).

"We see a distinct Higgs-like signature that cannot be easily explained without the presence of something new," physicist Wade Fisher of Michigan State University said in a statement. "If what we're seeing really is the Higgs boson, it will be a major milestone for the world physics community and will place the keystone in the most successful particle physics theory in history."

[Cyman]

Everyone know it hangs just off of the thing-a-jig on the perpetual motion machine. I can't believe those smart fellers don't know that.

[Boogieman]

“The particle has been predicted as the explanation for why all other particles have mass.”

This seems silly to me. Ok, if the Higgs boson gives everything else mass, then what gives the Higgs boson mass? They’re just punting the question a bit further down the road, but that seems to be a common feature of scientific investigation nowadays.

[muawiyah]

Not likely. The answer is the Standard Model is not predictive at all and what these guys think is the Higgs Boson is more like the edge of the page where the formula they were writing ran out of room.

[bigheadfred]

The two collaborations independently combed through hundreds of trillions of proton-antiproton collisions recorded by their experiments to arrive at this exciting result that in neither case could the researchers confirm for sure that what they see is a new particle and not simply signals created by background events which are in a way a cry from the grave and that is kind of like dead people voting which can't happen because they are dead but apparently it does happen all the time.

And in other news scientists have figured out how to drop into hyperspace but are stuck on the on ramp. It is bumper to bumper Higgs bosons...

[YHAOS]

"If what we're seeing really is the Higgs boson"

On the other hand, maybe you just had one too many cocktails with lunch.

[Windflier]

Ping me when these taxpayer-fed eggheads produce a breakthrough that leads to an honest, beneficial advance for mankind.

[Revolting cat!]

[newzjunkey]

...President George W. Bush and Congress had promised substantial budget increases for the physical sciences earlier in 2007. In the rush to trim the 2008 spending bill enough to avert a presidential veto, however, legislative leaders excised $88 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's funding for high-energy physics. Fermilab's 2008 budget abruptly shrank from $372 million to $320 million. Future of Top U.S. Particle Physics Lab in Jeopardy

Funding was never returned and future projects died along with America's leadership role in high-energy physics.

[newzjunkey]

...President George W. Bush and Congress had promised substantial budget increases for the physical sciences earlier in 2007. In the rush to trim the 2008 spending bill enough to avert a presidential veto, however, legislative leaders excised $88 million from the U.S. Department of Energy's funding for high-energy physics. Fermilab's 2008 budget abruptly shrank from $372 million to $320 million. Future of Top U.S. Particle Physics Lab in Jeopardy

Funding was never returned and future projects died along with America's leadership role in high-energy physics.