Quark experiment predicts heavier Higgs
Eugenie Samuel Reich and Jenny Hogan
18:00 09 June 04
The search for the elusive Higgs particle has maddened physicists since the
particle's existence was proposed in the 1960s. And now they know why. A new
analysis indicates that the particle is heavier than anyone expected.
Finding the Higgs is important because it is the only missing piece in one
of the leading theoretical jigsaws of modern physics, the standard model of
particle physics. The theory says that all matter is composed of six types
of quark - called up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top - as well as much
lighter particles such as electrons and neutrinos.
There is convincing evidence for the existence of all these particles, but
the model also requires the existence of the Higgs particle. The Higgs
supposedly drags on other particles as if miring them in molasses, thereby
endowing them with mass. Proof of its existence would cement the theory
firmly in place, but so far nobody has found convincing evidence of the
Higgs.
And not for lack of trying. During the 1990s, physicists searched for the
Higgs using the 1 billion Euro Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at
CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva.
LEP was able to look for particles at energies up to and well beyond the
Higgs's mass, then predicted to be around 88 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). But in
2001, physicists admitted defeat, saying that a search up to LEP's limit of
114 GeV had failed. The Higgs, they decided, must be even heavier.
Read the rest at NewScientist
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995095
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Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek.
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