Skip to content

Personal Growth — February 8, 2012

The Higgs Particle Is as Good as Found

If the statistics being produced by the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland are to be believed, there is a 99.996 percent chance that the elusive Higgs boson has been found.

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

What’s the Latest Development?

New data analysis out of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland has increased the likelihood that scientists have found the elusive Higgs boson, that most fundamental of particles which is thought to endow matter with mass. Sensors at the LHC have observed a Higgs decay, increasing the Higgs signal from 2.5 sigma to 3.1 sigma. Combining these results with earlier analysis from the LHC’s ATLAS lab, the Higgs signal increases to 4.3 sigma. In other words, the signal has a 99.996 percent chance of being correct.

What’s the Big Idea?

The greater surprise would be not finding the Higgs particle, say physicists who work at the LHC. The existence of the Higgs is predicted by the Standard Model, the best and most encompassing theory scientists have as to how the universe works. Were the Higgs particle not to be found, physicists would need to find a new explanation for why matter has mass. For now, the LHC is shut down for the winter. Scientists are currently meeting to determine at what power levels the collider will run at when it begins to run again in the spring.

Photo credit: shutterstock.com

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related

A large, intricate machine with metallic components and blue scaffolding in a laboratory setting. Numerous cables and pipes are connected to the central structure.

Starts With A Bang

Shortest-lived quantum particles exhibit quantum entanglement, too

LHC scientists just showed that spooky quantum entanglement applies to the highest-energy, shortest-lived particles of all: top quarks.

Interior of a particle physics laboratory showing a complex particle accelerator setup with multiple cables, detectors, and machinery designed to study glueball particles.

Starts With A Bang

What do unexpected experimental results actually tell us?

Scientific surprises, driven by experiment, are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science.

A worker in a hard hat and safety vest adjusts equipment in a facility alongside large red machinery labeled "Jefferson Lab." The scene fades into concentric circles, as if drawn by the powerful collider, leading to a bright light.

Starts With A Bang

Ask Ethan: Could we build a collider bigger than Earth?

The largest particle accelerator and collider ever built is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Why not go much, much bigger?

proton internal structure

Starts With A Bang

8 basic unanswered questions about the known particles

It’s 2024, and we still only know of the fundamental particles of the Standard Model: nothing more. But these 8 unanswered questions remain.

standard model color

Starts With A Bang

The Higgs boson’s most captivating puzzle still remains

Predicted way back in the 1960s, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 completed the Standard Model. Here’s why it remains fascinating.

Up Next

You’re So Predictable. Daniel Kahneman and the Science of Human Fallibility

Above all else, Kahneman’s legacy will be a precise, empirical reminder of our own fallibility, and a roadmap of the cognitive traps to which we’re most vulnerable.