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Dublin: 10 °C Thursday 23 May, 2013

Is CERN about to announce some big news about the Higgs boson?

CERN is to announce its latest results on the search for the ‘god particle’ this week. Could they have found it?

A simulated collision in the Large Hadron Collider which produces a Higgs boson
A simulated collision in the Large Hadron Collider which produces a Higgs boson
Image: CERN

SCIENTISTS AT CERN are to give an announcement this week on their ongoing search for the Higgs boson, with one describing the current scientific results as a “very exciting time”.

Researchers say they have have gotten more information from the Large Hadron Collider between June and April of this year than they did for the whole of 2011.

They have also refined their analysis techniques to improve their ability to detect anything that could be indicative of the Higgs boson.

“We now have more than double the data we had last year,” said Sergio Bertolucci, CERN’s Director for Research and Computing. “That should be enough to see whether the trends we were seeing in the 2011 data are still there, or whether they’ve gone away”.

In their last update in December researchers from CERN said that they had no definitive proof but found ‘intriguing hints’ that the Higgs boson could exist.

“It’s a bit like spotting a familiar face from afar,” said CERN’s Director General Rolf Heur.

Sometimes you need closer inspection to find out whether it’s really your best friend, or actually your best friend’s twin.

The Higgs boson is a subatomic particle which has been predicted to exist, but has never actually been observed. One Nobel laureate in physics has said that finding the Higgs boson would tie up a loose end of the so-called standard model of physics, which requires a Higgs-like particle to exist.

CERN will be giving its update on the search for the Higgs boson at 8am Irish time on Wednesday morning.

In the meantime, as we wait for the announcement from CERN this gives us an excuse to post the greatest nerdiest video ever:



(Video: alpinekat/YouTube)

Explainer: So what’s this Higgs Boson thing all about? >

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Comments (40 Comments)

  • I cerntainly hope so..

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  • My head’s too small for all of this.

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  • My moneys on them finding it at 125 GeV. Fingers crossed, it will be a huge discovery!

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    • E D 30/06/12 #

      I concur!

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    • Excuse my ignorance but what does that mean ? Could you link me to where I can read up on it ?

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    • GeV stands for Giga Electron Volt, a unit of energy used in particle physics. As mass and energy are interchangable it can be used to describe the mass of the higgs. Through the data they have collected so far they can identify energy ranges where the Higgs most likely does not reside and focus in on the ranges where they do more closely.

      Theres some excellent BBC horizon documentaries on the LHC and the search for the Higgs, well worth watching. Theres also any amount of material all over the internet, but they can be heavy going.

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    • Thanks man. i’ll check out the documentaries. it’s fascinating stuff.

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    • Serge 30/06/12 #

      125 GeV per particle or for both particles collided? Didn’t realise energies involved were that high. Theoretically that’s enough to produce most of the particle zoo I think. We’ve come a long way since Cockroft & Walton’s first Linear Accelerator with simple Hydrogen nuclei directed at a Lithium screen!

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  • That video was better then Jedward at the eurovision!

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  • Apparently they discovered Tron.

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  • random 30/06/12 #

    Exciting news if it has been found, but I wish people would stop referring to it as the god particle.

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  • Great news, also good to see science covered here. Irish media usually ignores it

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  • Goatboy 30/06/12 #

    That must be the most expensive music video ever made…

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  • my eyeballs are starting to hurt with brain information overload!

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  • I do wish they’d stop labelling this thing as the God Particle. It’s the most inaccurate description you could have for it.

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  • @emcg53 30/06/12 #

    Jeez that video. Less LHC and more THC me thinks…

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  • Was the Internet not developed by some guy from DARPA rather than CERN?

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  • Jesus that video is embarrassing.

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  • Higgs Boson / “God Particle” -2012 Science validates a 150+ year old discovery ………………Infinite Intelligence….Steve Meyer / New Thought Movement / HolisticDNA

    The Sixth Sense Activation Sequence – GROUNDBREAKING New Book in 2012!

    “New Thought promotes the ideas that “Infinite Intelligence” or “God” is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and “right thinking” has a healing effect…” Wikipedia

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  • Maybe its just me…but, The recent excitement about the higgs etc is a bit premature. So far the scientists have said that they have found evidence of the higgs boson.Great!… Now if it turns out that this is in actual fact proof of one type of higgs ( supersymmetry predicts five) and that there may be more….well thats goodbye standard model ..welcome the new default theory …supersymmetry.
    Ps to all those who put there efforts into posts here thank you…except those who put lines and line and lines of waffle they have googled and posted here to somehow convince readers of these comments ,that they ‘understand’ the math etc…..you don’t….Its so easy to find the articles you stole from….I have and ye are sad.

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  • “We now have double the data we had last year”.
    Yeah that’s usually how it works!

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  • OH MY GOD that video is diabolical, couldn’t even last the first minute!!

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  • Why does the collider scare me- could b the end of the world could cause the worlds end

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  • They would want to come up with something With a budget of 7.5 billion euros as of Jun 2010. the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built

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    • a fraction of the cost spent on wars, banks and general corruption! without CERN we wouldn’t have the internet. science is worth every penny. the proton beam design in the lhc have now been ear marked for cancer treatment. they do great work and long may they continue.

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    • When we’re all dead and gone the valuable work completed in organizations like CERN will be the only thing we have to give future generations whether they make discoveries or not. Every generation to come gains from these projects as we have gained from those before us. It’s pretty ironic you’re critical of their budget using the World Wide Web, a medium which one of their scientists created.

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    • I bet it’s still less then the fortune obtained by the church over the centuries while they tried to bury science and convince the weak minded and gullible that their crazy fairy tales are fact!

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  • Sankaravelayudhan Nandakumar says:
    July 6, 2012 at 2:09 pm
    Higg’s boson godly particle can be tuned up mentally to produce any matter out of fast gravity as carried out by Shri Sathyasai Bhaba who materialized things out of his hands.This is nothing but true .What scientific explanation you give for this output.He has materialized idols under the earth and they were very hot.It is the love and affection.Iis the love and affection simulated by brain and atman produces Higg’s boson results by gravity at a very faster rate.What benefits the the ordinary instruments will brings about even with such a discovery..Few things are beyond scientific explanations.Electron particle acting as interference wave in the system of entering a barrier along with electron particle that act as a guide wave by analogy could be used in a new propulsion system. The ring radiation could be confined with John Pendry’s invisible cloaking screen the exiting pulse is strongly chirped: short wavelengths are propagating faster than the long wavelengths.
    The idea came to me when magician David Copperfield throw the card through the window glass on the other side that penetrated the glass without any damage that promoted my line of thought .Saint Thiru Gnanasanbhandar disappeared in space along with his new bride on his marriage day along with some 16000 disciples in fireball quantum black hole.This was not a story.It really happened.He brought back one woman who died already from her ashes.Her name was Bhoompavai and this happened at Mylapore temple ,chennai.,Tamilnadu.

    The particulate states in space have already been identified and defined mathematically in a theory called Sankhya in Vedic Science. Purusha yet to be found is the black hole mass equivalent forming the gravitational center of .9149 kg. Followed by the Mahad the planck mass equal of 2.2E minus 8 kg, which expands to become the Praikriti or nuclear fermion of 1.67E minus 27 kg by converting the mass density into spin angular momentum of the nuclear volume, and expands to become the Vikriti or Lepton of mass 9Eminus -31 kg and then transmogrates as Vikriti or Neutrino of masss 9.5 E minus 35 kg . Seven of the Vikriti or Neutrino accelerate and radiate together as a quanta or photon spectrom from 6.6 E minus 34 kg and expands into spectrums of reducing mass down to 1.3 E minus 51 kgs as the Moolaprakriti, which is yet to be found in physics. The
    space critical matter density comprising moolaprakritis is 3.6 E minus 25 kg or 203 GEV whiich is the boson state and its mass value is formed by the matter coupling constant of .66478 and equals 135.4 GEV and is being experimentally detected now as the Higgs boson. Space is in perpetual harmonic oscillation at the Necluonic and Leptonic region .

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