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  • Exotic Hadron Particle Confirmed by LHC

    Quarks, or subatomic, elementary particles of other subatomic particles, have only been known to exist since the 1960’s. Since that time, though, scientists have made great progress with identifying key characteristics of quarks and their utility. Quarks come in six different flavors – up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top. These quarks combine in different ways to form either baryons or mesons, both of which fall under the hadron category. The most common forms of baryon particles are protons and neutrons, while mesons are usually observed as products of nuclear decay. Quarks are also the other subatomic particle to experience all four fundamental forces of nature – strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravity. Because of this, all quarks had been explainable by the Standard Model of particle physics. Until now, that is.

    On April 9, scientists at the CERN Laboratory in Switzerland made an amazing new discovery. While the scientists were waiting for the repairs and improvements of the Large Hadron Collider to be complete and for the particle accelerator to come back online, they decided to look at some of the data the LHC had collected during its previous online operations.

    What the scientists discovered may change the face of particle physics forever.

    The scientists studied the decay of more than 25,000 mesons from 180 trillion proton-to-proton collisions and were faced with stunning news. The tetraquark, which had first been postulated in 2003, was confirmed as true by the data the scientists studied.

    This tetraquark, composed of four quarks, defies the laws of all known particle physics. Until this point, scientists knew only of the two previously mentioned types of hadrons – baryons and mesons. Baryons are composed of three quarks, while mesons are composed of two – both a quark and an antiquark.

    The Standard Model of particle physics predicts the existence of both categories of hadrons; it does not, however, predict any semblance of a tetraquark.

    “We’ve confirmed the unambiguous observation of a very exotic state—something that looks like a particle composed of two quarks and two anti-quarks. The discovery certainly doesn’t fit the traditional quark model. It may give us a new way of looking at strong-interaction physics,” stated study co-leader Tomasz Skwarnicki, a high-energy physicist at Syracuse University.

    When the particle was first proposed in 2003, it was called Z(4430) and derived from observations of a previous particle collider which implied that a particle heavier than any other known subatomic particle existed. Unfortunately for those scientists, they were not able to prove to the scientific community that such a particle did, indeed, exist.

    “Some experts argued that [the] initial analysis [of Z(4430)] was naïve and prone to arrive at an unjustified conclusion. As a result, many physicists concluded that there was no good evidence to prove this particle was real,” recalled Skwarnicki.

    The scientists are CERN, though, are quite positive of their results. The report of the tetraquark came with a certainty of 13.9 sigma. In layman’s math, this means that the margin of error with the result is 1*10^-44, or about the same as winning the lottery multiple times in a row.

    “The significance of the Z (4430) signal is overwhelming – at least 13.9 sigma – confirming the existence of this state. The LHCb analysis establishes the resonant nature of the observed structure, proving that this is really a particle, and not some special feature of the data,” reported LHCb spokesperson Pierluigi Campana.

    While the scientists would love to postulate about the impact of this discovery, essentially nothing is known about this exotic hadron particle. And, in even worse news, no new research will be conducted until the LHC is back online in 2015. However, the wait will be rewarded as the new LHC will be twice as powerful as it previously was and six times as powerful as any other particle collider in the world.

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  • CERN is Already Planning For the LHC’s Replacement

    Nearly one year ago CERN announced that the Higgs boson had been experimentally observed. The discovery was one of biggest scientific confirmations seen in decades and was one of the major goals in mind when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was created.

    Now, with engineers working hard to get the LHC back up and running for 2015, CERN has announced that it is looking even further into the future when it comes to its supercollider technology.

    CERN today announced that it has launched a study into a future supercollider even more spectacular than the LHC. The study will be called the Future Circular Colliders (FCC) program and will research the feasibility of a new hadron collider. This new supercollider could be 80 to 100 kilometers in circumference – far larger than the 27 kilometer in circumference LHC. It might also reach energies close to 100 TeV, dwarfing the LHC’s current 14 TeV capabilities.

    “We still know very little about the Higgs boson, and our search for dark matter and supersymmetry continues,” said Sergio Bertolucci, director for Research and Computing at CERN. “The forthcoming results from the LHC will be crucial in showing us which research paths to follow in the future and what will be the most suitable type of accelerator to answer the new questions that will soon be asked.”

    In the meantime, CERN is already formulating plans for increasing the luminosity of the current LHC. The so-called High Luminosity LHC will be completed by 2024 and, according to CERN, will increase the number of collisions possible in experiments by a factor of ten.

    Image via CERN

  • Stephen Hawking Upset with “God Particle” Discovery

    At 71 years old, Stephen Hawking is the oldest survivor of ALS, a motor neuron disease. Despite being diagnosed with ALS at age 21, Hawking has defied the odds to continue living and become an extremely productive member of the scientific community. Hawking’s work in physics has led to advanced discoveries with the general relativity, black holes, and various areas of quantum mechanics – most of which has brought forth more questions than answers. Perhaps that is why one should not be surprised to hear Hawking lament the fact that the Higgs boson particle was discovered last July.

    In speaking to an audience at London’s Science Museum, Hawking opined that “Physics would be far more interesting if it [the Higgs boson particle] had not been found.” By discovering the “God particle”, scientists have fixed the final a chink in the armor of the Standard Model of physics, a theory which attempts to integrate the four fundamental forces of nature – gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces – into one unified theory explaining all of known physics in the universe.

    What the discovery of the Higgs boson immediately means is that physicists now know what gives subatomic particles (things such as electrons and quarks) mass, the property which allows said particles to interact with other particles in the way they do to form atoms and more complex molecules. The idea of the Higgs boson particle was first put forth by scientists in the 1960’s, but no experimental evidence existed for the particle until the findings of the Large Hadron Collider last July.

    While Hawking may believe that the discovery of the Higgs boson makes physics less interesting, he is still pursuing many interesting avenues of research. Hawking is one of the primary proponents of M-theory, a theory which integrates all the versions of string theory into one vision. One aspect of M-theory is that it allows for and encourages scientists to consider the fact that we exists in a multi-dimensional and multiverse world, all of which exist through the laws of physics and are not dependent upon a “creator”:

    “These multiple universes can arise naturally from physical law. Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states at later times, that is, at times like the present, long after their creation. Most of these states will be quite unlike the universe we observe, and quite unsuitable for the existence of any form of life. Only a very few would allow creatures like us to exist.Thus, our presence selects out from the vast array only those universes that are compatible with our existence. Although we are puny and insignificant on the scale of the Cosmos, this makes us, in a sense, lords of creation,” states Hawking.

    In order for further progress to be made with the M-theory, certain other discoveries must be made first, discoveries which Hawking hopes can be found using the LHC: “There is still hope that we see the first evidence for M-theory at the LHC particle accelerator in Geneva. From an M-theory perspective, the collider only probes low energies, but we might be lucky and see a weaker signal of fundamental theory, such as supersymmetry. I think the discovery of supersymmetric partners for the known particles would revolutionise our understanding of the universe,” voiced Hawking.

    Supersymmetry is a theory which states that all particles have a superpartner particle with the exact opposite properties. If this LHC could help find proof of this theory, then progress would be made toward solidifying the M-theory as the prevalent universe model.

    Until that point is reached, however, Hawking leaves us with some advice as to how to protect the existence of the human race: “So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and hold on to that child-like wonder about what makes the universe exist.”

    [Image via Stephen Hawking’s Website]

  • CERN to Open For Tourists in September

    The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has announced it will be opening its doors to the public this fall. On September 28 to 29, the organization’s installations, including the Large Hadron Collider, will be open for tourists and gawkers alike.

    CERN has stated the days are part of an outreach for the organization to share its discoveries with a wider audience. The theme for the two days is “Our Universe is Yours,” and visitors will be shown the technology that has enabled discoveries such as the confirmation of the Higgs boson. CERN scientists and engineers will be oh-hand to explain their duties and the experiments that are run on the most advanced particle physics research equipment ever built.

    CERN is expecting around 100,000 people to come and tour its facilities during those two days in September. Tickets for underground visits will be parsed out sparingly through an online ticket office, and shuttles will be made available car parks near CERN’s facilities on Franco–Swiss border.

    Just before the public days at CERN, the organization will be holding a European Researchers’ Night event called “Origins 2013.” Researchers at CERN headquarters in Geneva, UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and in Bologna will describe their recent research findings, including several breakthroughs. The event will be streamed live on the Origins 2013 website.

    The Large Hadron Collider recently reached the end of its first three-year running period. It has now been shut down for maintenance and upgrades that will allow it to run at higher energies. The supercollider is scheduled to be reactivated in 2015.

  • Higgs Boson Found in Large Hadron Collider Data

    Scientists working with data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week revealed that a detailed analysis suggests that the elusive Higgs boson really has been discovered.

    The possible discovery of the so-called “god particle” was announced last year, but scientists emphasized that more research would be needed before the discovery could be confirmed. Researchers have now analyzed two and a half times the data available at the time of that announcement, and it still appears likely that the Higgs Boson has been found.

    “The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set 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 physicist working on the CMS project at CERN.

    The analysis of the data focused on the observed particle’s quantum properties and interactions with other particles. The Higgs boson is hypothesized to have no spin and its parity is hypothesized to be positive. Researchers stated the data collected at CERN “strongly indicates” that the observed particle is the Higgs.

    “The beautiful new results represent a huge effort by many dedicated people,” said Dave Charlton, spokesperson for the ATLUS experiment at CERN, which is using the LHC’s high power to observe particle interactions. “They point to the new particle having the spin-parity of a Higgs boson as in the Standard Model. We are now well started on the measurement programme in the Higgs sector.”

    (Image via CERN)

  • Large Hadron Collider to Power Down Until 2015

    Researchers with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) today announced that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has reached the end of its first three-year running period.

    “We have every reason to be very satisfied with the LHC’s first three years,” said Rolf Heuer, director-general of CERN. “The machine, the experiments, the computing facilities and all infrastructures behaved brilliantly, and we have a major scientific discovery in our pocket.”

    During its first three years, the LHC has provided physicists with tons of data, including 100 petabytes of data in just the past few weeks. Researchers have most recently been using the LHC to collide protons and lead ions in an effort to understand the moments just after the big bang.

    The LHC will now be shut down until 2015. In the meantime, data from the past three years will continue to be analyzed while LHC maintenance is performed and the machine is upgraded for higher energy running.

    “There is a great deal of consolidation work to do on CERN’s whole accelerator complex, as well as the LHC itself,” said Steve Myers, director for Accelerators and Technology at CERN. “We’ll essentially be rebuilding the interconnections between LHC magnets, so when we resume running in 2015, we will be able to operate the machine at its design energy of 7TeV per beam.”