Scientists have found strong evidence of a new subatomic particle that looks like the one believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.
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| The Large Hadron Collider |
Joe Incandela, spokesman for the CMS experiment, one of the main Higgs-searching experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider made the announcement at a scientific seminar on the French-Swiss border in what was a curtain raiser for the International Conference on High Energy Physics held in Melbourne.
The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN that have been conducting the experiments found hints of the new particle by analysing trillions of proton-proton collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2011 and 2012.
The Higgs boson, commonly known as “The God Particle”, is one of the biggest, most enduring scientific mysteries. First posed by Professor Peter Higgs in 1964, it is believed to be the particle that gives mass to all matter.
It's discovery is said will bring us one step closer to understanding how the Big Bang at the dawn of time gave rise to stars, planets and even life.
It's considered one of the final pieces of the puzzle required for a complete understanding of the standard model of physics—the so-far successful theory that explains how fundamental particles interact with the elementary forces of nature.
According to the standard model, if the Higgs field didn't exist, the universe would be a very different place.
Just discovering its existence has been a monumental task and required the building of the world’s largest and most powerful atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, which is a giant 27km-long accelerator costing $5 billion.
Australia is fortunate to have smaller accelerators at its disposal, two of which can be found at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) located at Lucas Heights.
The STAR and ANTARES accelerators are helping scientists tackle climate change, date archaeological artefacts and a number of other important applications.
The Large Hadron Collider, located 200 metres underneath the French-Swiss border outside Geneva, is the world’s biggest and most expensive particle accelerator. Image courtesy of the New York Times.
ANSTO is Australia's link to CERN engaging in a number of valuable collaborative projects.
Higgs boson backgrounder
The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory which describes the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fundamental forces, as well as the fundamental particles that make up all matter in the universe.
The Higgs boson gives each type of particle its own mass. Its existence is needed to explain a number of the features of the Standard Model, as importantly, it provides us with an understanding of why some particles have very large masses while others are quite light.
Its the last particle and with its discovery is considered the missing piece in the Standard Model of physics that could help explain: gravity, general relativity and dark matter (most of the energy present in the universe) - to name just a couple of examples.
Published: 04/07/2012