Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Promising Evidence for Higgs Boson

Promising, but not yet totally conclusive, evidence from the Large Hadron Collider for the Higgs boson was announced today. As noted here, there are "six areas along the circumference of the LHC that will gather data and conduct experiments [that] are simply known as detectors." Two of these detectors, known as the ATLAS and CMS, came up with similar mass estimates for the Higgs. A more definitive conclusion about whether the particle exists is expected within several months. My previous introduction to Higgs fields is available here.