LHC experiments eliminate more Higgs hiding spots (Update)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Two experimental collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider, located at CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, announced today that they have significantly narrowed the mass region in which the Higgs boson could be hiding.
The ATLAS and CMS experiments excluded with 95 percent certainty the existence of a Higgs over most of the mass region from 145 to 466 GeV. They announced the new results at the biennial Lepton-Photon conference, held this year in Mumbai, India.
“Each time we add new data to our analyses, we close in more on where the Higgs might be hiding,” said Darin Acosta, a University of Florida professor and deputy physics coordinator for the CMS experiment.
More than 1,700 scientists, engineers and graduate students from the United States collaborate on the experiments at the LHC, most of them on the CMS and ATLAS experiments, through funding by the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation. Brookhaven National Laboratory serves as the U.S. base for participation in the ATLAS experiment, and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory serves as the U.S. base for participation in the CMS experiment.
The Higgs particle is the last not-yet-observed piece of the theoretical framework known as the Standard Model of particles and forces. According to the Standard Model, the Higgs boson explains why some particles have mass and others do not.
“The more data the experiments collect, the more scientists can say with greater statistical certainty,” said Konstantinos Nikolopoulos, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory on the ATLAS experiment. “The LHC has been providing that data at an impressive rate. The machine has been functioning beyond expectations.”
Scientists on ATLAS and CMS both announced seeing small, possible hints of the Higgs boson at the European Physical Society meeting in July. Those hints have become less pronounced as scientists have increased the amount of data in their analysis.
“These are exciting times for particle physics,” said CERN’s research director, Sergio Bertolucci. “Discoveries are almost assured within the next twelve months. If the Higgs exists, the LHC experiments will soon find it. If it does not, its absence will point the way to new physics.”
The experiments are on track to at least double the amount of data they have collected by the end of the year.
More information: Further information about the Lepton Photon conference: http://www.tifr.res.in/~lp11/
Provided by CERN
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Aug 22, 2011
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Aug 22, 2011
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the mass is the electric dipole moment
m = e.k/x (1 - pi^3.alpha^2 /2)
m-mass;e-electron charge;k-Boltzmann constant;
x-Compton wavelength;pi=3.1415927;
alpha-fine structure constant.
Saraiva
Aug 22, 2011
Rank: 2.6 / 5 (5)
Poor ant. Poor, poor ant.
Aug 22, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (4)
Aug 22, 2011
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As noted in the article the alpha for this statistic is 0.05
(i.e. one in 20 such statistics turn out to be wrong due to 'freak' fluctuations in the measurements taken).
This is why the few events that have been reported as possible Higgs findings aren't being published yet - the statistics are not yet statistically significant (at least not with an alpha of 0.05)
Aug 22, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
Cool.
Anyway, I totally believe in the Higgs Boson, even if I'm not doing the math on it right now.
Aug 22, 2011
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http://www.physor...lhc.html
and then
http://www.physor...849.html
please just jump to around 130 - 139 already so this can be done with -- the issue with brute force searches is that you have to test everything
Aug 22, 2011
Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
Come on God, don't let us down!
Aug 22, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (6)
If you require absolute certainty, switch from physics to religion. Nothing can disprove a religious belief.
Aug 22, 2011
Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
You do realize that there is a significant time lag between doing an experiment and evaluating the data?
'Jumping' to another energy region isn't called for. Let them sort through the data they have first.
Aug 22, 2011
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where does the explosion of data stop and simply prove to be an explosion?
Aug 22, 2011
Rank: 2.3 / 5 (3)
The second misunderstanding, prevalent here, involves statistical estimates. When researchers say that there is a 95% chance that the Higgs won't be found in the 145 to 466 GeV. They are excluding the entire range, and any version of the Higgs that might occur there. The six sigma limit used as a gate on discovery is a lot easier to meet.
Aug 22, 2011
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Aug 23, 2011
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Aug 23, 2011
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I do realize the time lag for experimentation to data processing -- nothing humans have can process a few hundred gigabytes a day that the LHC is producing -- secondly
@eachus
I do understand the process they are using to eliminate ranges - but to be honest 50% of the range they eliminated had already been done at other reactors and they were in essence double checking while getting used to the new hardware. Its not the the LHC is the only reactor that can find the Higg's it the only reactor that can thoroughly test the entire range in a 2 year time frame. The number of collisions it can produce at each energy level is a few orders of magnitude higher than anything else built. SO this process is a lot faster than it could have been with say Fermi lab
Aug 23, 2011
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Aug 24, 2011
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Aug 25, 2011
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