Some interesting news on the quantum front - the next big thing in trying to figure out the stuff we are made of is the Higgs boson.
The E.U. has been spending over 8Bn Euros building the Hadron Collider specifically to look for the Higgs. It is a huge and expensive machine but the team that finds the Higgs will be awarded the Nobel prize -- this is that important. Well, according to this article at Slate, someone in the USA may already have found it...
Quantum Scoop
The Holy Grail of particle physics may already have been found.
Some call the Higgs boson the Holy Grail of particle physics. As the only undetected element of the field's theoretical masterpiece�the "standard model"�the Higgs guarantees a Nobel Prize for the experimenters who find it first. Now the European Union has spent an estimated $8 billion to build the world's largest particle accelerator, the large hadron collider, to finally track it down.
So goes the reasoning, at least, of popular science writers. In the last month, The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Boston Globe, among others, have run articles on the LHC, which will be capable of reaching energies seven times greater than any comparable device ever created. All of this coverage has focused on the Higgs.
But what if someone else has already found it?
The article talks about the Tevatron (located outside of Chicago) and a curious finding there -- a ghost in the machine if you will... This time it's from New Scientist:
Higgs boson: Glimpses of the God particle
On 9 December last year, as John Conway looked at the results of his experiment, a chill ran down his neck. For 20 years he has been searching for one of the most elusive things in the universe, the Higgs boson - aka the God particle - which gives everything in the cosmos its mass. And here, buried in the debris generated by the world's largest particle smasher, were a few tantalising hints of its existence.
Conway first revealed the news of his experiment earlier this year in a blog. Experimental particle physicists are sceptics by nature, loath to claim the discovery of any new particle, let alone a particle of the Higgs's stature, and in his blog Conway dismissed hints of its existence as an aberration, just as many other supposed signs of the elusive particle have proved to be after closer examination. The tiny blips in Conway's data have so far simply refused to go away.
What's more, using data made public last week in a second blog, another team of researchers has independently seen hints of a new particle with similar mass. Both results may yet be dismissed, but the coincidence is striking, and is one that is getting physicists excited. If they have found evidence of a Higgs particle, then it points towards the existence of a universe in which each and every particle we know of has a heavier "super-partner", an arrangement of the cosmos known as supersymmetry.
The New Scientist article goes into some detail about the Higgs and about supersymmetry and the evidence for each theory. Fascinating stuff. The Large Hadron Collider is supposed to go online sometime later this year. Fun time to be alive! Rounding out the quantum morning is this LOL CAT:
Hat tip to BoingBoing
