Has the ‘Big Bang’ machine detected the elusive ‘God particle’?
April 23rd, 2011 - 1:25 pm ICT by ANI
Washington, April 23 (ANI): It is making rounds among the physics community that the world’s largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle.”
The controversial rumor is apparently based on a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, reports Live Science.
It’s not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean - but the note already has researchers talking.
The buzz started when an anonymous commenter recently posted an abstract of the note on Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit’s blog, Not Even Wrong.
The Higgs boson is predicted to exist by prevailing particle-physics theory, which is known as the Standard Model. Physicists think the Higgs bestows mass on all the other particles - but they have yet to confirm its existence.
The leaked note suggests that the LHC’s ATLAS particle-detection experiment may have picked up a signature of the elusive Higgs.
The signal is consistent, in mass and other characteristics, with what the Higgs is expected to produce, according to the note.
However, some physicists say the note may be a hoax, while others believe the “detection” is likely a statistical anomaly that will disappear upon further study.
“Its production rate is much higher than that expected for the Higgs boson in the Standard Model,” physicist Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University told SPACE.com in an email interview.
“So the signal may be evidence of some other particle, which in some sense would be even more interesting, or it could be the result of new physics beyond the Standard Model,” he said.
Stone clarified that the note is not an official result of the ATLAS research team.
“It is actually quite illegitimate and unscientific to talk publicly about internal collaboration material before it is approved. So this ‘result’ is not a result until the collaboration officially releases it,” he said. (ANI)
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