LHC sees hint of boson heavier than Higgs

[ScienceRocks]

LHC sees hint of boson heavier than Higgs

The two experiments that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012 have sensed an intriguing — if very preliminary — whiff of a possible new elementary particle. Both collaborations announced their observations on 15 December, as they released their first significant results since a major upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outside Geneva, Switzerland, was completed earlier this year.

The results largely match a rumour that has been circulating on social media and blogs for several days: that both the CMS and ATLAS detectors at the LHC have seen an unexpected excess of pairs of photons, together carrying around 750 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) of energy, in the debris of their proton–proton collisions. This could be a tell-tale sign of a new particle — also a boson, but not necessarily similar to the Higgs — decaying into two photons of equal mass. If so, the particle would be about four times more massive than the next heaviest particle discovered so far, the top quark, and six times more massive than the Higgs.

In their talks at CERN — the laboratory that hosts the LHC — the speakers for the two experiments took turns in surveying the results of the higher-energy, 'run 2' of experiments, which began in June and was suspended in early November. Both speakers left the results on photon pairs for the end of their talks.

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LHC sees hint of boson heavier than Higgs

nice! science rocks!!!!

 

[ScienceRocks]

Maybe one day we will bump into the particle needed to get us to the stars??? or maybe one that will improve our understanding of physics enough for dozens of other advances.

 

[miketx]

I knew that large hardon collider would pay off!

 

[ScienceRocks]

I knew that large hardon collider would pay off!

Too bad America didn't complete our collider so we could of taken credit for all this science. Good for the Eu and the hard work of thousands of scientist!