Possible new particle discovered

Does this mean that they've discovered how to make an antimatter drive? Never mind the technicalities, let's just get down to practicalities. Or have they found the elusive Higgs-Boson?! That'd be a poke in the eye for the Large Halon Collider.

No practicalities yet, I'm afraid. No antimatter drives either. These guys have found statistical evidence in weak interactions for a new ``something''... but whether a particle, interaction, decay path is unknown yet. Because it is the weak interaction, it is possible that it could involve the Higgs boson, but very unlikely. Fermilab has previously looked for the Higgs boson explicitly and couldn't find it, so I think the consensus is that this new thing isn't the Higgs. (See the arXiv paper, right column of page 7.) Because they don't know what this thing is yet it is also possible that it c... [More]

I dicovered a new particle in my ear the other day. I believe it was the 'God particle'. Or part of my brain. But seriously, a very interesting devalopment in the world of subatomic particles.

Well if this really does prove itself out it will be back to the old drawing board.

I dicovered a new particle in my ear the other day. I believe it was the 'God particle'. Or part of my brain. But seriously, a very interesting devalopment in the world of subatomic particles. Yes, indeed. But only highly trained people will understand the significance of this discovery. Ludwik . .

I didn't know Fermilab was still in operation. And I like to think of myself as a science buff.

In the words of Mr. Spock... Facinating.

This is an exciting development. There's still a 0.3% chance that the results are simply a statistical anomaly, which sounds small but there have been intriguing looking results in the past at the 0.3% significance level which have turned out to be just that - statistical anomalies. If this turns out to be correct then it will rewrite the physics textbooks as it's most likely not related to the elusive Higgs particle according to what I have read, which would suggest a new 5th fundamental force of nature.

Isn't strange that the Fermi lab who was supposed to close in a few months because it was becoming useless (LHC taking over) has its researchers just discover a new something something who might keep them working???