CERN Scientists Confirm Discovery Of Higgs Boson Or God Particle

Scientists at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) Wednesday confirmed that the particle that they discovered July, last year was a Higgs boson or a God Particle as it is often referred.

The scientists from ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN¹’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presenting the preliminary new results at the Moriond Conference, La Thuile, Italy said that the particle looked more and more like the God Particle. Apparently, scientists had analyzed two-and-a-half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, to confirm the identity of the Higgs boson and have concluded that the particle is indeed a God Particle.

“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,” CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela said.

However, it is not yet clear this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model, a statement in CERN website said.

The ATLAS and CMS experiments had observed a new particle in the mass region of around 125-126 GeV last year, which the scientists said had properties that are consistent with the Higgs boson. The CERN did not confirm the new particle to be a Higgs boson then.

The long-sought sub-atomic particle is identified by how it interacts with other particles and its quantum properties – like its spin and parity. A Higgs boson is assumed to have no spin and possess a positive parity – a measure of how its mirror image behaves. After analyzing the data the scientists have concluded that the new particle preferred no spin and had positive parity indicating that it is a God particle.

"The beautiful new results represent a huge effort by many dedicated people. 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 program in the Higgs sector," ATLAS spokesperson Dave Charlton said.

Last week, Physicist Brian Petersen of Atlas was quoted saying to a news agency, "it does look like the SM (Standard Model) Higgs boson.”

However, scientists at CERN said that to confirm whether it is a Standard Model Higgs boson or a super-Higgs, it would require several years and data from the LHC. Detecting a boson is a difficult and time consuming process as it takes around 1 trillion proton-proton collisions for observing a boson.

Higgs boson is considered as the missing piece of the puzzle in the Standard Model of physics and is a crucial particle that gives mass to elementary particles.

However, for further experiments the CERN scientists will have to wait two years as the LHC closed down last month for two years for upgrading its power.