Tomorrow, CERN will be webcasting a talk on the latest results in its search for the Higgs boson, a particle that is theorized to provide other particles with mass. The director of CERN has gone on record as saying there won’t be any announcement that we’ve definitively discovered the Higgs, nor will there be any statement indicating that we’ve completely ruled out its existence. Still, expectations are high that we’ll find some signal indicating the Higgs is probably at a specific mass—rumors have it near either 120 or 140GeV.
Even as the webcast proceeds, science writers everywhere will be scrambling to explain the results. We thought we’d get a jump on things and give you an explanation of what exactly the scientists at the LHC’s two general-purpose detectors, ATLAS and CMS, are looking for, and why it’s so hard to be certain about what they’ve seen. via ars technica
December 12, 2011
