After both likely and far-fetched rumors made their rounds on the web for weeks, CERN?the European Counsel for Nuclear Research that runs the largest particle accelerator in the world?finally announced its big Higgs boson news today.
And it seems to be worth the wait.?One of the most elusive scientific mysteries of the past century looks like it?s on its way to being solved.
By analyzing trillions of proton-proton particle collisions from this year and last, researchers have found "strong indications for the presence of a new particle which could be the Higgs boson," according to the CERN website and a press conference early this morning. The painstaking process of sifting through the results from subatomic collision after collision seems to have paid off. Now they just need to crunch all the numbers for a new paper to be published at the end of the month.
Although the Higgs is a complicated little particle, basically, scientists think that it acts like a conductor. The theory is that the Higgs tells other particles (protons, neutrons) how much mass they need to collect. Without it, atoms themselves could never form. The Higgs boson is the reason that anything in our world has mass at all.
For more about the chase for the Higgs and why it matters, check out these links from around the web.
Particle Smashing 101: How a particle collider works.
Why the Higgs Matters: An animated video.
CERN Press Release on the newest findings.
Q&A with an astrophysicist from the NPR news blog.
PM reports from the last time we thought they found it.
Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/higgs-boson-discovered-unofficially-10317172?src=rss
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