Waiting for tomorrow's announcement: chronicle of the discovery of the Higgs boson

2012/07/03 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Fisika

The chronicle of the discovery of the Higgs boson could culminate tomorrow. The physicists of the CERN laboratory will make an announcement in the field of particle physics research, and although they have not confirmed that it will have to do with the Higgs boson, they are convinced that it will be so in the specialized media. If confirmed, it could be the most important news that Physics has given this year.

The reason is that the Higgs boson is the last component of a broad scheme. The most accepted theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, specifies this boson. If it exists, there is no reason not to accept that the model is correct. If it does not exist, it would be necessary to redo the work of decades to create a new model.

In 1964, the boson was a theoretical proposal by physicist Peter Higgs. But to confirm the theory one had to find the boson and it was a complex work. Among others, the largest particle accelerators that currently exist should be used. In this work a giant LHC accelerator was installed. It was a difficult job, even if it existed, it could not be a single boson. In any case, the director of CERN, Rolf Heuer, in an interview with Elhuyar magazine, said that by December 2012 they would know if the Higgs boson really exists.

The news came a year earlier. Two LHC detectors found bosons and both detections were consistent with particle energy. Shortly afterwards, the boson signal was also found in the Tevatron accelerator. They were very good news, but not definitive. The degree of certainty of all these detections was not within the limits to give of course the discovery. Therefore, tomorrow will be the end of the chronicle of discovery. From the CERN they say they will make an announcement, but they have not specified what it will be. But Peter Higgs himself and three other mathematicians who worked with him on his initial proposal were invited to the event.