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| Feynman Diagrams Depicting Possible Formations of the Higgs Boson. Image Credit: scienceblogs.com, astrobites |
Topics: CERN, Higgs Boson, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics
Nature
The two experiments that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012 have sensed an intriguing if very preliminary whiff of a possible new elementary particle. Both collaborations announced their observations on 15 December, as they released their first significant results since completing a major upgrade earlier this year.
The results largely matched a rumour that has circulated on social media and blogs for several days: that both the CMS and ATLAS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outside Geneva, Switzerland, have seen in the debris of proton-proton collisions an unexpected excess of pairs of photons carrying around 750 giga electronvolts (GeV) of energy combined. This could be a tell-tale sign of a new particle — also a boson, but not necessarily similar to the Higgs — decaying into two photons of equal mass. It would be about four times more massive than the next heaviest particle discovered so far, the top quark, and six times more massive than the Higgs. [1]
New York Times Science
Does the Higgs boson have a cousin?
Two teams of physicists working independently at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, reported on Tuesday that they had seen traces of what could be a new fundamental particle of nature.
One possibility, out of a gaggle of wild and not-so-wild ideas springing to life as the day went on, is that the particle — assuming it is real — is a heavier version of the Higgs boson, a particle that explains why other particles have mass. Another is that it is a graviton, the supposed quantum carrier of gravity, whose discovery could imply the existence of extra dimensions of space-time. [2]
1. LHC sees hint of boson heavier than Higgs, Davide Castelvecchi
2. Physicists in Europe Find Tantalizing Hints of a Mysterious New Particle, Dennis Overbye
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