CERN (EU)
God particle: Confirmation is “achingly close”
March 7, 2013 3:19 pm | by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer | News | CommentsPhysicists in Italy said Wednesday they are achingly close to concluding that what they found last year was the Higgs boson, the elusive "God particle." They need to eliminate one last remote possibility that it's something else. That “something else” is a graviton, another subatomic particle associated with gravitational fields, not mass.
Atom smasher hiatus sets stage for more discovery
January 7, 2013 1:22 pm | by John Heilprin, Associated Press | News | CommentsThe world's largest and most powerful atom smasher goes into a 2-year hibernation in March, as engineers carry out a revamp to help it reach maximum energy levels that could lead to more stunning discoveries following the detection of the so-called "God particle."
The first LHC protons run ends with new milestone
December 19, 2012 8:58 am | News | CommentsOn Monday, CERN completed its first Large Hadron Collider proton run. The remarkable first three-year run of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator was crowned by a new performance milestone. The space between proton bunches in the beams was halved to further increase beam intensity.
CERN collider may have produced new type of matter
November 27, 2012 2:59 pm | News | CommentsWhen beams of particles crash into each other at high speeds, the collisions yield hundreds of new particles, most of which fly away from the collision point at close to the speed of light. However, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) team at the Large Hadron Colllider found that in a sample of 2 million lead-proton collisions, some pairs of particles flew away from each other with their respective directions correlated. The observation suggests the collisions may have produced a new type of matter known as color-glass condensate.
CERN collider to become the world's fastest stopwatch?
November 12, 2012 10:24 am | News | CommentsIn addition to ability to create elusive particles, the Large Hadron Collider also has the ability to create the shortest light pulses yet. According to scientists, these heavy ion collisions produce yoctosecond-scale pulses that have been impossible to measure. Now, however, researchers say they can do this by using a concept originally developed for astronomy.
LHC collides protons with lead ions for the first time
September 13, 2012 5:53 am | News | CommentsThis morning the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collided protons with lead ions for the first time. This week's short run will give the experiments a first taste of proton-nucleus collisions before the main run in January to February 2013, the last LHC physics before the accelerator is shut down for maintenance.
India: Enough about Higgs, let's discuss the boson
July 10, 2012 6:57 am | by Katy Daigle, Associated Press | News | CommentsWhile much of the world was celebrating the international cooperation that led to last week's breakthrough in identifying the existence of the Higgs boson particle, many in India were smarting over what they saw as a slight against one of their greatest scientists. Media covering the story gave lots of credit to British physicist Peter Higgs for theorizing the elusive subatomic "God particle," but little was said about Satyendranath Bose, the Indian after whom the boson is named.
Eureka! Physicists celebrate evidence of particle
July 5, 2012 7:56 am | by John Heilprin, Associated Press | News | CommentsScientists at the world's biggest atom smasher hailed the discovery of "the missing cornerstone of physics" Wednesday, cheering the apparent end of a decades-long quest for a new subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, or "God particle," which could help explain why all matter has mass and crack open a new realm of subatomic science. Still, CERN is stopping just shy of declaring the new particle is the Higgs itself.
Evidence of 'God particle' found
July 2, 2012 4:33 pm | by John Heilprin and Seth Borenstein, Associated Press | News | CommentsScientists at the world's biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have nearly confirmed the primary plank of a theory that could restructure the understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight. They have a footprint and a shadow, and the only thing left is to see for themselves the elusive subatomic particle believed to give all matter in the universe size and shape.
Scientists raise energy level at Big Bang machine
April 6, 2012 5:10 am | News | CommentsAfter two years of running at 3.5 TeV per beam, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, say the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider in a 27-km (17-mile) tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva has begun operating at 8 TeV, greater than any previous physics accelerator.
Second neutrino team refutes faster-than-light find
March 18, 2012 9:01 am | by Frank Jordans, Associated Press | News | CommentsEuropean researchers said Friday they have measured the speed of neutrinos and found the subatomic particles don't travel faster than light after all, refuting another team's measurements that prompted widespread disbelief among scientists last year.
CERN experiment makes spectroscopic measurement of antihydrogen
March 7, 2012 8:17 am | News | CommentsThe ALPHA collaboration at CERN has reported an important milestone on the way to measuring the properties of antimatter atoms. This follows news reported in June, 2011, that the collaboration had routinely trapped antihydrogen atoms for long periods of time.
LHC to run a 4 TeV per beam in 2012
February 14, 2012 4:23 am | News | CommentsCERN announced that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will run with a beam energy of 4 TeV this year, 0.5 TeV higher than in 2010 and 2011. This decision was also accompanied by a strategy to optimize LHC running to deliver the maximum possible amount of data in 2012 before the LHC goes into a long shutdown to prepare for higher energy running.
Hints of the Higgs show in latest analyses
December 14, 2011 8:39 am | News | CommentsTwo experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have nearly eliminated the space in which the Higgs boson could dwell, scientists announced Tuesday. However, the ATLAS and CMS experiments see modest excesses in their data that could soon uncover the famous missing piece of the physics puzzle.
New LHC data further narrows hunt for 'God' particle
December 13, 2011 3:04 am | News | CommentsOne of two research teams hunting for the Higgs boson announced Tuesday that the latest data has helped narrow the search. The particle is more likely to be found in the lower energy ranges of the Large Hadron Collider, and this finding is expected to be confirmed later in the day by the second team.
Atom smasher to narrow search for Higgs boson
December 9, 2011 6:31 am | by John Heilprin, Associated Press | News | CommentsScientists at the world's largest atom smasher have new data that shows with greater certainty where to find the long-sought theoretical particle that would help explain the origins of the universe.
CERN excludes one error in faster-than-light finding
November 18, 2011 4:43 am | by The Associated Press | News | CommentsScientists at the world's largest physics laboratory say they have ruled out one possible error that could have distorted measurements they took that appear to show particles traveling faster than light.
LHC to begin long lead-ion run
November 17, 2011 9:53 am | News | CommentsAfter several months of proton collisions, the Large Hadron Collider is embarking on a period of lead ion running, which will last until Dec. 7, 2011. LHC’s performance has been dramatically improved since the first lead-ion run in 2010, and researchers are expecting large quantities of data from the creation of quark gluon plasma, the stuff that existed in the earliest moments of the universe.
LHC proton run for 2011 reaches successful conclusion
November 1, 2011 4:35 am | News | CommentsAfter some 180 days of running and four hundred trillion proton proton collisions, the Large Hadron Collider's (LHC's) 2011 proton run came to an end at 5:15 p.m., October 30, 2011. For the second year running, the LHC team has largely surpassed its operational objectives, steadily increasing the rate at which the LHC has delivered data to the experiments.
Energy that drives the stars comes closer to Earth
October 20, 2011 4:01 am | News | CommentsHeavy-ion fusion, a special approach to creating fusion for electrical power production, has long been the choice of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory accelerator physicists. Now the near prospect of "burn and gain" at the National Ignition Facility, plus a forthcoming National Academies report on inertial confinement fusion energy, have spurred new interest in heavy-ion fusion.
Challenging Einstein is usually a losing venture
September 28, 2011 6:45 am | by Frank Jordans and Seth Borenstein, Associated Press | News | CommentsLast week, the finding from CERN that a type of subatomic particle had been clocked faster than the speed of light shocked scientists and elicited sharp questions. Theories on relativity have been challenged before, however, and many findings that have at first seemed to contradict Einstein’s theories have later been shown to fit in neatly.
LHC discovers the proton’s big “ego”
September 27, 2011 8:53 am | News | CommentsThe TOTEM experiment at the Large Hadron Collider has just confirmed that, at high energy, protons behave as if they were becoming larger. What this means is that the proton’s total cross-section increases with energy, and scientists plan to further test this phenomenon at even higher energies.
Physicists wary of junking light speed limit yet
September 23, 2011 8:04 am | by Frank Jordans, Associated Press | News | CommentsWhen a team fired a neutrino beam 730 km underground from Geneva to Italy, they didn’t expect to find that it had traveled 60 nanosec faster than light. Although imperceptible to us the difference is measurable with a small degree of certainty, and calls for an independent repeat test, perhaps in the United States.
Roll over Einstein: Pillar of physics challenged
September 22, 2011 1:11 pm | by Frank Jordans and Seth Borenstein, Associated Press | News | CommentsScientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos traveling faster than light. CERN researchers are reportedly so astounded at the findings—and their apparent refutation of one of Einstein’s basic tenets—that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.
Endgame for the Higgs boson
September 14, 2011 5:41 am | by Susan Brown, University of San Diego | News | CommentsThe last missing piece of scientists' fundamental model of particle physics is running out of places to hide. That piece, an elementary particle called the Higgs boson that is thought to give all matter mass, has evaded detection so far. But physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, have ruled out most of the range of masses the Higgs could have, leaving just a narrow span where the elusive particle might be found.
