Case for Higgs Boson Strengthened by New CERN Analysis
New results from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva “strongly indicate” that the particle discovered last year is a Higgs boson, the European Organization for Nuclear Research said.
The particle, which scientists said in July was probably the long-sought Higgs, is “looking more and more” like the missing link in the Standard Model, a theory explaining how the universe is built, the organization, known as CERN, said in a statement today. The results, based on analysis of 2 1/2 times more data than was available last year, were presented at a conference in Italy.
It remains an “open question” whether the particle is the Higgs or the lightest of several other bosons, and answering that question will take more time, CERN said. Its existence would help scientists gain a better understanding of how galaxies hold together, and could open a door to exploring other parts of physics such as superparticles or dark matter that telescopes can’t detect.
The results “are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is,” said Joe Incandela, a spokesman for the CMS research project, one of the two collaborations looking for the Higgs at CERN.
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