Physicists working at the CERN
laboratory on the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) Compact Muon Solenoid
(CMS) and A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS), claim to have discovered a
particle which resembles the elusive Higgs boson popularly known as the
God particle which is the key to understanding the formation of the
universe in a way. At a seminar held at CERN, the ATLAS experiment – one
of the seven particle detector experiments at the LHC – presented its
preliminary results observing a new particle in the mass region of
around 125-126 GeV.
“We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV,” said ATLAS
experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti. Which means that scientists
are 99.999 percent sure of the results or a false positive probability
of 1 in 9 trillion!
Although the results are preliminary,
based on data collected in 2011 and 2012 with the 2012 data still under
analysis. The complete results will be presented towards the end of the
year when the LHC will have completed more experiments with more data.
The announcement definitely points to a new particle's discovery which
fits the description of the Higgs boson.
In a leaked video from CERN, which is now taken off from the CERN website, Joe Incandela, the CMS
experiment spokesperson says, “We've observed a new particle... we have
quite strong evidence that there's something there with a mass roughly
130 times the mass of the proton.”
According to the Standard Model – a
theoretical model which describes the fundamental particles and forces
that control the Universe - the Higgs boson provides mass to all other
particles. The experiments being conducted at the LHC aim to collide
protons travelling towards each other at the speed of light. The debris
that would be formed after the collision would be examined. Here is a
graphical video of the same collision.
Here is the video that was taken off by
CERN but which is still available on the net. Do also check out the live
webcast of the news conference announcing the discovery, here.
Courtesy: CERN, Telegraph
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