14 DAY TRIAL // At a conference held earlier today (July 4), scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced that physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have found a new boson, which respects all the limitations and characteristics proposed for God's particle.
The discovery has a degree of certainty of sigma 5, which is just one step below sigma 6 (absolute certainty). While the LHC team is eager to conduct a series of studies to ensure the accuracy of the data, they admit that this moment could indeed mark the discovery of the Higgs boson.
If the work is validated in follow-up investigations, we may have just witnessed the unification of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, the theory that has been under research for over 40 years, and which is currently used to explain subatomic particles and their interactions.
During the meeting in Geneva, CERN experts told attendants that the newly found particle has properties consistent with those of the long-sought Higgs. This boson, the fifth in the Standard Model, enables energy to acquire mass, and vice-versa, hence its nickname.
“The mounting evidence that Higgs bosons have been produced and detected at the Large Hadron Collider experiment at CERN is a triumph for particle physics,” comments professor Valentin Khoze.
The expert holds an appointment as the director of the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP), at the Durham University, in the United Kingdom. IPPP researchers are responsible for providing the theory and analysis behind a number of experiments at the LHC.
“Particle theorists predicted the existence of the Higgs boson almost 50 years ago and it plays an absolutely vital role in our very understanding of fundamental physics. Without the Higgs particle, other particles such as electrons and quarks would be massless and the Universe would not be what it is,” Khoze adds.
“Now, with the amazing results from the LHC, we are finally starting to find the experimental evidence that the Higgs really exists,” he goes on to say. The expert also pointed out that this announcement should not be equated to the certain discovery of the Higgs, but to an important step forward in this direction.
The second stage in physicists' plans is to study the properties of this amazing boson. This will lead to a more in-depth understanding of some of the most mysterious aspects of the Universe, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
“Today's Higgs update from CERN is an important step on this road,” Khoze concludes.