In case you were wondering, things are moving steadily along in the search for the Higgs boson, and in the general ramping up to study entirely new frontiers of particle physics. I noticed a couple of interesting articles today that give you a nice sample. The first, by Dick Ahlstrom in the Irish Times, and is about the announced “rediscovery” of the W and Z bosons at the Large Hadron Collider, by a team working at the LHCb experiment. (I personally think that the term “rediscovery” is somewhat misleading since it makes it seem like the community forgot where they (the key signatures of the unity of the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces at high energy) were since their discovery in the early 80s, but let me not quibble too much.) The point is that experimental teams are refining their searching techniques while sifting through all the new data being produced in the collisions at the LHC, and one thing you need to do before you begin to look for new things (like the Higgs) is to make sure you can find and recognize old things. Especially very important old things. So that’s the point really. (I must confess that I thought I’d heard that Ws had already been spotted at the LHC earlier this year (at ATLAS at least), but evidently I’m mistaken. Either way, it is good for the LHCb experiment.) The article is here, and the image above right is from there, courtesy, I imagine of the LHCb team’s press release.
The second article, by Rachel Courtland, is in New Scientist. It is about the prospects for finding the Higgs first at the Tevatron, in Illinois. Of course, whenever a major machine is close to its shutdown decision, it is always the case that it starts discovering signs of new physics – this is a Law of Nature if there ever was one. Nevertheless, the physics case seems interesting and exciting. We shall see. That article is here.
Oh. There’s a third article of note. Nature has a short piece by Zeeya Merali on several of the more exotic things that people might be keeping an eye out for at the LHC. Not just mini black holes and extra dimensions, mark you, but more. Have a look. All in good fun, and who knows…?
For more discussion of the LHC, see all the related posts in the list below, and of course go to the CERN LHC website too.
-cvj
Cormac, thanks for the clarification!
Cheers,
-cvj
Hi Clifford, I too enjoyed the Irish Times article, well spotted. I think the ‘rediscovery’ of particles at CERN these last few months deserves more attention,given how long they took to find originally. Re W and Zs, I think they have been observed at all the detectors now – the point is that LHCb has been able to observe them at low densities