Higgs Update: It’s a boson!
University of Birmingham researchers, along with colleagues from the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, have today (4th July 2012) confirmed that they have found a new particle consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson. These results mark a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the fundamental laws that govern the Universe. At a seminar held in CERN and relayed to the International Conference on High Energy Physics 2012 conference in Melbourne, Australia, this morning, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest results in the search for the Higgs particle. Both experiments see strong indications for the presence of a new particle in the mass region around 125- 126 GeV. Thanks to the results coming from the two experiments, these preliminary findings appear to show a dramatic 5 sigma signal level of certainty. If this is indeed a new particle, then it must be a boson and it would be the heaviest such particle ever found. From Melbourne, Professor Dave Charlton, Deputy Spokesperson for the ATLAS project from the University of Birmingham's School of Physics and Astronomy says: "Many people have been working night and day to analyse the fresh data from the LHC which has been pouring in this year, which has allowed us to reveal these exciting preliminary results today.
