During the International Europhysics Congress being held in Grenoble, France, new clues were released about the research being carried out at the LHC. Apparently the researchers could have found “traces of a signal” of the so-called God particle.
Since in 2008 the first experiments were carried out to find the Higgs Boson, that intriguing particle that would open a world of speculation in the world of physics. Now, three years later, it seems that this elusive particle has really been encircled. As explained by the director of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, Rolf Heuer, “we can solve Shakespeare’s question (to be or not to be) about the Higgs boson by the end of next year”.
And it is that the two groups that are working on finding the boson, the CMS and ATLAS, have found “intriguing” physical signs that denote “traces” on it, as they have made public this weekend.
One of the basic aspects to know the existence of the boson is its mass. The experiments seek, by making two proton beams crash, that they generate heavier particles that in turn form lighter ones. The latest published studies have delimited the mass range of this particle between 115 and 150 GeV, when recent experiments by Professor Heuer placed it between 150 and 200 GeV. The limits are becoming tighter and tighter.
As Heuer himself has explained, “we know everything about the Higgs boson, except if it exists .” The discovery of the God particle would confirm the standard model on which the particle theory of physics has been based in recent decades. If, on the contrary, its existence is ruled out, it would be necessary to rethink a large part of the theories exposed so far.
