By Adam MannJuly 3, 2012 | 4:23 pm |
Scientists at CERN will announce their most recent results in the search for the Higgs boson early on July 4 – with many speculating that the discovery of the long-sought particle will finally be official.Join us here for a live feed from Europe of the event starting at 11 p.m PT tonight (2 a.m. ET).
The announcement of results is expected to begin at midnight PT, featuring spokesmen from the Large Hadron Collider’s two Higgs-hunting experiments, ATLAS and CMS, followed by a press conference and question and answer session.Rumors have been flying for weeks already on what the LHC has found, with most pointing to a discovery of the Higgs boson with a mass of 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).
Peter Higgs and several other physicists theorized about the Higgs boson in the 1960s, though it is only in recent decades that machines powerful enough to search for it have been built. If the particle is discovered, it will be the final piece of the Standard Model of physics, which describes the interactions of all particles and forces.Many physicists are hoping that the Higgs announcement will include details about its properties and why it doesn’t exactly fit in with the Standard Model’s predictions. If so, it could point to new physics beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry, though thus far no firm evidence for this has been observed.
It may take several more years of searching at high energies to confirm or exclude different advanced theories.Several physicists will be live-blogging the announcement with commentary for those in need of help following the convoluted jargon, including Aidan Randle-Conde from Southern Methodist University and Sean Carroll from Caltech. Randle-Conde will also be giving a post-talk wrap-up with physicist Stephen Sekula. [http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/12/13/higgs-seminar-discussion/]Image: The ATLAS experiment detector at the LHC. ATLAS collaboration/CERN
Adam is a Wired reporter and freelance journalist. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.
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