Science & Technology

Scientists announce major new LHC discovery

By T.K. Randall
August 29, 2018

Image: CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Tunnel
Credit: Julian Herzog / CC BY-SA 3.0 (adapted) Not content with finding the long-sought Higgs boson, the scientists behind the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva have been continuing their efforts to unravel the secrets of the universe by pushing the world-famous particle accelerator to increasingly high levels of energy and intensity.

Now it seems as though their efforts have paid off once again thanks to the first confirmed observation of Higgs bosons decaying into a pair of fundamental particles known as bottom quarks.

The discovery is important because it means that the experimental data strongly agrees with theoretical predictions, as oppose to challenging the foundations of our understanding.

"This observation is a milestone in the exploration of the Higgs boson," said spokesman Karl Jakobs.

"It shows that the ATLAS and CMS experiments have achieved deep understanding of their data and a control of backgrounds that surpasses expectations.""ATLAS has now observed all couplings of the Higgs boson to the heavy quarks and leptons of the third generation as well as all major production modes."

The findings take scientists one step closer to understanding why the Higgs boson even exists.

"The experiments continue to home in on the Higgs particle, which is often considered a portal to new physics," said Eckhard Elsen, CERN Director for Research and Computing.

"These beautiful and early achievements also underscore our plans for upgrading the LHC to substantially increase the statistics."

"The analysis methods have now been shown to reach the precision required for exploration of the full physics landscape, including hopefully new physics that so far hides so subtly."

Source: Live Science

Tags: Large Hadron Collider