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Initial results from high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider offer first glimpse of physics at new energy frontier.In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record for highest energy particle collisions. This week, team led by researchers from MIT, CERN and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest, Hungary, completed work on the first scientific paper analyzing the results of those collisions. Its findings show that the collisions produced an unexpectedly high number of particles called mesons — a factor that will have to be taken into account...

The typical Hollywood action hero skirts death for a living. Time and again, scores of bad guys shoot at him from multiple directions but miss by a hair. Cars explode just a fraction of a second too late for the fireball to catch him before he finds cover. And friends come to the rescue just before a villain’s knife slits his throat. If any one of those things happened just a little differently, the hero would be hasta la vista, baby. Yet even if we have not seen the movie before, something tells us that he will make it to...

GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher has recorded its first high-energy collisions of protons, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. Physicists hope those collisions will help them understand suspected phenomena such as dark matter, antimatter and ultimately the creation of the universe billions of years ago, which many theorize occurred as a massive explosion known as the Big Bang. The collisions occurred Tuesday evening as the Large Haldron Collider underwent test runs in preparation for operations next year, said Christine Sutton of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN. Two beams of circulating particles traveling in opposite directions at 1.18...

Report hints at the existence of a new and massive elementary particle In a weak moment, researchers have found an unexpected asymmetry in particle production that could hint at exotic physics. The tentative evidence, announced August 21, could be the fingerprint of a massive elementary particle that would help unify three of the four known forces in nature. The physicists collected data for nearly a decade at the Belle particle accelerator experiment in Tsukuba, Japan. In the experiment, known as a B factory, beams of electrons and positrons collide to produce millions of pairs of B mesons and anti-B mesons....

Longer search promised after physicists exclude heavy masses for the 'God particle'. The Higgs boson particle may be lighter — and the race to find it tougher — than particle physicists had hoped, according to the latest results from the Tevatron particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.Fermilab is still hunting the Higgs boson.Fermilab On 13 March, scientists there announced that they had ruled out a crucial part of the hunting ground for the 'God particle', thought to confer mass on all other matter.The results suggest that the Higgs boson is not a relatively high-mass particle,...

Same techniques could be used to detect theoretical particles like the Higgs boson Physicists have identified the production of the elusive single top quark, two research teams report. Previously top quarks have been observed only when produced in pairs, as when they were initially discovered 14 years ago at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. Now, researchers using Fermilab’s two detectors announced March 9 that they have detected single top quarks. The techniques used to find the singleton quarks could help to identify other rare particles, such as the Higgs boson, the scientists say. “What a discovery,” comments...

CHICAGO (AFP) – Physicists have come closer to finding the elusive "God Particle," which they hope could one day explain why particles have mass, the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced Friday. Researchers at the Fermilab have managed to shrink the territory where the elusive Higgs Boson particle is expected to be found -- a discovery placing the American research institute ahead of its European rival in the race to discover one of the biggest prizes in physics. Physicists have long puzzled over how particles acquire mass. In 1964, a British physicist, Peter Higgs, came up with...

GENEVA -- Michelangelo L. Mangano, a respected particle physicist who helped discover the top quark in 1995, now spends most days trying to convince people that his new machine won't destroy the world. "If it were just crackpots, we could wave them away," the physicist said in an interview at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym, CERN. "But some are real physicists."

Enlarge ImageA difference of differences.By comparing two separate comparisons of matter and antimatter, researchers with the Belle detector may have found hints of new particles.Credit: KEK Why does the universe contain so much matter and so little antimatter? Particle physicists have puzzled over that question for 40 years. Now, new measurements may point to a hole in the current explanation for the subtle differences between matter and antimatter and could provide a better understanding of how the universe came to be chock-a-block with matter. The key lies in a slight flaw in the mirrorlike relationship between matter (common particles...

Garrett Lisi: This surfer is no Einstein... Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 22/01/2008 No Einstein...but behind Garrett Lisi's 'theory of everything' lies an amazing idea, says Marcus du SautoyTwo months ago, the physics world was buzzing with the news of a new Einstein. Garrett Lisi, an unemployed physicist with no university affiliation who spent his time surfing in Hawaii, had come up with the Holy Grail of science: a theory unifying quantum physics and Einstein's theory of relativity.   Dude, where's my theory? Symmetry star Garrett Lisi The media went wild.However, in the last few weeks several physics blogs have uncovered a...

Researchers from the University of Rochester have helped measure the elusive top quark with unparalleled precision, and the surprising results affect everything from the Higgs boson, nicknamed the “God particle,” to the makeup of the dark matter that comprises 90 percent of the universe. The scientists developed a new method to analyze data from particle accelerator collisions at Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory, which is far more accurate than previous methods and has the potential to change the dynamics of the Standard Model of particle physics. Details of the research are in today’s issue of the journal Nature. “This is a...

OAKLAND, Calif., Jan. 13 — At least three advanced diagnostic tests suggest that an experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has cracked open protons and neutrons like subatomic eggs to create a primordial form of matter that last existed when the universe was roughly one-millionth of a second old, scientists said here on Tuesday. The hot, dense substance, called a quark-gluon plasma, has managed to generate intense disputes in the 15 years or so in which scientists have pursued it. In 2000, a major European laboratory claimed that it had, for the first time, liberated particles called quarks from where...