Of the 33 pages that make up the article, 24 list the authors and institutions, merely 9 concern actual research work

May 16, 2015 06:45 GMT  ·  By

A research paper published in the science journal Physical Review Letters this past May 14 gives the best and most precise estimate yet of the mass of the Higgs boson.

Specifically, the study is said to establish the mass of the elusive particle with just ±0.25% room for error. A truly impressive feat, but not the reason the physics paper is now grabbing headlines.

The paper has a record number of authors

As it turns out, this research article in the journal Physical Review Letters, whose official name is “Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in pp Collisions at s√=7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments,” was authored by a record number of scientists.

5,154 of them, to be more precise. Mind you, the study was inked by so many researchers that, of its 33 pages, merely 9 concern actual science work and 24 simply list the authors and their home institutions.

The article is the end result of a collaboration between teams of brainiacs entrusted with two of the seven particle detector experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, a mammoth particle smasher operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Interestingly, word has it that the monikers of all of the 5,154 scientists behind this paper, together with the names of their institutions, will also appear in the print version of this issue of the journal Physical Review Letter, Nature informs.

There is increased brain power in numbers

The researchers involved with this study say that it was precisely because the physics paper included 5,154 authors that it managed to deliver the best estimate yet of the mass of the Higgs boson.

Fewer authors would have meant less data to work with, and consequently, the study would not have been quite as accurate. True, it wasn't easy to coordinate the team to produce a coherent study, but everything turned out A-OK in the end.

“The biggest problem was merging the author lists from two collaborations with their own slightly different styles,” Robert Garisto, editor for the journal Physical Review Letters, said in an interview.

“I was impressed at how well the pair of huge collaborations worked together in responding to referee and editorial comments,” he went on to detail.