Higgs Bosons for the Rest of Us

This is a superbly written series on the work in Switzerland on discovering the Higgs-Boson for which matter and energy have taken on an interesting form in the shape of our universe (hence the name, God Particle). It has only taken a quadrillion proton-proton collisions to detect it with some level of confidence.

Be sure to view the video on the second page as it details not only the search but the construction of the collider.

Great stuff!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/science/chasing-the-higgs-boson-how-2-teams-of-rivals-at-CERN-searched-for-physics-most-elusive-particle.html?_r=0

Of interest, it may be the Higgs-Boson that will be attributable to our universe's destruction into a more boring, stable one in about 10 billion years.

PHENOMENALLY GREAT article and post, SS!! I LOVE IT!! I follow news on the Higgs boson closely, as I believe it's some of the very most important research underway today. For folks here who may have thought "ARGH! SIX pages @NYT... too long, didn't/won't read!" there is a very cool, real-world analogy that explains Higgs particles (a very short slideshow) at the very top of the 3rd tab/page, Game of Bumps. Ah, and another cool, simple, explanatory slideshow at the top of the next page/tab, Still Missing.

SS, regarding your last statement, this sort of sums-up the significance of the Higgs boson, for a layperson like me/us:

Quote :

Dr. Tonelli had his heart set on discovering the Higgs boson, which he said was crucial to understanding the future as well as the past: measuring it could help determine whether the universe was stable or whether the Higgs field could twitch and dissolve us all back into that bland soup of massless particles.

I was going to mention that most, if not all, physicists and scientists in the field reject the name "the God Particle" for several reasons, but this funny little anecdote is in the article you posted:

Leon Lederman, the former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Illinois, where the boson was being sought, once called it “the God particle,” scandalizing his colleagues but delighting journalists, who kept using the name. Dr. Lederman later said that he wanted to call it the “goddamn particle.”

VERY exciting stuff, SS... Thanks again for posting this.

Linked to the article you posted I found a timeline, which I found interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/05/science/higgs-boson-timeline.html#/#time233_7129

I've watched several of the CERN/Higgs boson / CERN raps on YouTube, all of which are both funny and educational. Here is one:

Ha, good one, Rice...

I thought the graphics on the NYT piece were excellent, comparing it to a snowfield.

If you have been following...there was some theory being proposed that there could be TWO Higgs-like particles because consistent bumps are yielding two masses and two decay partilces....photons for one and Z particles for the other.

Even so, the scientists closest to the project are betting calibration or statistical errors even though the theory predicts more then one, but substantially different massed particles.

Have you seen the Higgs boson / CERN raps before? There are several of them (at least), and all of them I've seen are real funny not to mention educational. Good to know that some of the top physicists and scientists in the world have a good sense of humor.

I had actually read about that and I think it will be really interesting to see how it all finally shakes-out AND how long it takes for them to make the determination/s.

Thanks again for posting this... I'd missed the article and probably should add a Higgs boson / CERN section to my Google News page so I don't miss anything exciting! In fact, I'll do it now before I forget.