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– The Higgs boson "God particle" may or may not exist, and physicists at the Large Hadron Collider may or may not be close to spotting it, but one thing is clear: There are some very excited scientists at CERN. Rumors that the elusive particle believed to endow matter with mass has been spotted have circulated before, but experts believe confirmation of its existence may finally be unveiled at the European research lab next week, when teams that have trawled data from 350 trillion collisions release their results, the Guardian reports. The teams have been gradually narrowing the energy range where the Higgs may lurk, and expect to see the first glimpse within days, a top CERN scientist tells the BBC. CERN's director of research is more cautious, saying only that "indications that are not consistent with its non-existence" may surface. "This hunt for the Higgs is like fishing in an ancient way," he says. "Instead of using modern tools you are removing the water from the pond. It might look tedious but it is the only way, at the end of the day, when you have removed all the water from the pond to find the smallest fish."
Image caption The search for the Higgs boson could be approaching its conclusion at Cern 
  
 A respected scientist from the Cern particle physics laboratory has told the BBC he expects to see "the first glimpse" of the Higgs boson next week. 
  
 It comes as the search for the mysterious fundamental particle reaches its endgame. 
  
 If so, this will be a significant milestone for teams at the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC). 
  
 The particle-accelerating machine on the French-Swiss border was built with the hunt for the Higgs as a key goal. 
  
 The collider smashes beams of protons together in head-on collisions, with signs of the Higgs boson, perhaps, in the debris. 
  
 The Higgs boson is notoriously difficult to define, but its existence helps us to understand why particles have mass. 
  
 The search for the Higgs has become the hottest pursuit in modern physics. It is separate from the unexpected announcement in September of the apparently faster-than-light neutrinos, a result which is still puzzling the world of physics, and has taken the limelight recently. 
  
 'Growing sense of excitement' 
  
 Next Tuesday, two separate teams will each reveal the outcome of trawling through their latest data from LHC collisions. A spokesman for one of these teams told us that this year alone they've searched the remains of some 350 trillion collisions, with only ten or so producing candidates for a reliable sign of the Higgs. 
  
 The two teams of scientists work independently, using two separate detectors - called ATLAS and CMS - each relying on different technologies. This way they provide an independent cross-check for each other. How closely their results agree will be an important measure of how significant a finding they can claim. 
  
 The teams are sworn to secrecy, but various physics blogs, and the canteens at Cern, are alive with talk of a possible sighting of the Higgs, and with a mass inline with what many physicists would expect. 
  
 The teams have been focussing-in on the Higgs by ruling out energy ranges where it might be lurking. They now expect to see it at around 120 to 125 GeV (gigelectronvolts), where one GeV is about the mass of a proton. 
  
 Professor John Ellis, a former head of theoretical physics at Cern, told Newsnight's science editor Susan Watts about the growing sense of excitement at Cern, a week ahead of that key science meeting next Tuesday. 
  
 "I think we are going to get the first glimpse. The LHC experiments have already looked high and low for this missing piece. It could be that it weighs several hundred times the proton mass, but that seems very unlikely, then there's a whole intermediate range where we know it cannot be, then there's the low mass range where we actually expect it might be. There seem to be some hints emerging there... and that's what we're going to learn on Tuesday". 
  
 Professor Ellis, who is now a guest professor at Cern, and was recently made James Clerk Maxwell professor at King's College, London, told Newsnight that finding the Higgs matters hugely to modern physics. 
  
 "What we have at the moment is something we call the Standard Model, that describes all fundamental particle physics. You can think of it as being an enormous giant Jigsaw puzzle, but there's a piece missing right in the middle there. We have been looking for this for 30 years now, and finally, maybe, hidden under the back of the LHC sofa…we are finally finding it". 
  
 The teams at Cern will not claim next week's result as an official "discovery" - a so-called 5-sigma event. This is because they have not yet produced enough experimental data to make that claim. That will come next year, probably by the summer. 
  
 Journalists are being told to wait for the briefing after next week's scientific meeting, but researchers whom Susan Watts spoke to in the coffee shops of Cern were finding it hard to keep the smiles from their faces. 
  
 Understandably perhaps, the director of research at Cern, Sergio Bertolucci, is being more cautious than Professor Ellis. He told me, somewhat enigmatically: "It's too early to say…I think we may get indications that are not consistent with its non-existence." He expects next Tuesday's results to amount to less than the formal definition of "evidence", but said the statistics will be "very interesting". 
  
 "I would be very inclined to say just that we will not give anything except an update which will tell people we are on a good path to the discovery." 
  
 Mr Bertolucci told Newsnight: "This hunt for the Higgs is like fishing in an ancient way… instead of using modern tools you are removing the water from the pond… it might look tedious but it is the only way, at the end of the day, when you have removed all the water from the pond to find the smallest fish." ||||| Soon after Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general at Cern, emailed staff about next Tuesday's seminar on the most sought-after particle in modern times, rumours hit the physics blogs that the lab might finally have caught sight of the Higgs boson. 
  
 I wrote last week that the heads of the two groups that work on the Atlas and CMS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will give the talks. That in itself is telling – usually more junior researchers present updates on the search for the missing particle. 
  
 Last month, scientists at the lab said that if the particle exists, it was most likely to have a mass somewhere between 114 and 141GeV (gigaelectronvolts), where one GeV is roughly equivalent to the mass of a proton, a subatomic particle found in atomic nuclei. 
  
 A couple of blogs, including viXra and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong, have now posted rumours that the Atlas and CMS teams see Higgs-like signals around 125GeV, though they say the evidence is not robust enough to claim an official discovery. 
  
 If the rumours are right and precede a discovery, it means the Higgs boson weighs as much as two copper atoms. That fits quite well with a theory called supersymmetry, which gives physicists a way to unify the four known forces of nature, a feat that frustrated Einstein to the grave. 
  
 But enough of the rumours. When the seminar was announced – and before the rumours surfaced – I asked some physicists to share, in a couple of simple sentences, their hunches on what gives mass to fundamental particles. Is it the simplest version of the Higgs mechanism, which gives us what is called the Standard Model Higgs boson? Is it a more complex kind of Higgs field? Or something else entirely? I hoped the replies would give a flavour of the range of views they hold. 
  
 Most got back to me. A few kept their replies to a couple of sentences. Some included technical language, and perhaps that was inevitable. One Nobel prizewinner said the Higgs boson doesn't exist. Another responded with a limerick. 
  
 Before I list the replies, here is some background. The Higgs mechanism describes an invisible field that, it is argued, split one force into two soon after the birth of the universe. Specifically, it divided an ancient "electroweak" force into the electromagnetic and weak forces we see at work today. The latter is seen in some radioactive decay processes, and is involved in creating sunshine. 
  
 The Higgs field splits the electroweak force by giving mass to the particles that carry the weak force (the W & Z bosons) and leaving the particle that carries the electromagnetic force (the photon) massless. The Higgs boson is the quantum particle associated with the Higgs field. 
  
 The simplest version of the Higgs boson is described by the Standard Model, a group of equations that explain how known particles interact with each other. There are plenty more complex versions though. Some of these could take ten years to rule out, according to Matt Strassler, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. 
  
 One more point. The Higgs field, if real, is responsible for only a tiny proportion of mass. Around 98% of mass of everyday objects comes from the energy stored up in the particles that make atomic nuclei, i.e. quarks that are bound together by gluons inside protons and neutrons. The Higgs field is thought to give mass to quarks and electrons, but that makes up only one or two percent of an object's mass. Let's say I weigh 80kg. That means less than a kilo comes from the Higgs field. 
  
 Here are the physicists' responses, in no particular order: 
  
 "They said when the collider goes on 
  
 Soon they'd see that elusive boson 
  
 Very soon we shall hear 
  
 Whether Cern finds it this year 
  
 But it's something I won't bet very much on." 
  
 "The Higgs mechanism for generating masses is extremely attractive and has no real competition. Beyond that there's little certainty. A near-minimal implementation of supersymmetry, perhaps augmented with ultra-weakly interacting particles, is the prettiest possibility. So I'd like several Higgs particles, Higgsinos, some ghostly stuff, and a pony." 
  
 [Note: A Higgsino is a supersymmetric partner of a Higgs boson]. 
  
 "It is difficult to think of alternatives that are consistent theoretically and with everything observed to date that don't involve the Higgs mechanism – the process of essentially distributing a 'charge' throughout the vacuum. Elementary particles interact with this 'charge' and acquire mass. It is not necessarily clear, however, what is responsible for that charge in the first place and that is what determines what experiments will see. 
  
 "I still think the most likely answer is a conventional light Higgs boson. But when asked what I thought the odds were in a popular lecture, I surprised myself by saying 70%. I've even bet chocolate based on those odds. If not true, I think a heavier composite Higgs boson made up of more fundamental components might be the answer." 
  
 John Terning, University of California, Davis 
  
 "We know that strong interactions of quarks and gluons provide the bulk of the proton's mass; I suspect that there are some new – very strongly interacting – particles that provide the masses for the fundamental particles. The most spectacular possibility is that these new particles are the magnetic monopoles that Paul Dirac predicted." 
  
 "You are mistaken about the Higgs search at Cern. The machine runs at half energy so far, and no one expects relevant (for the Higgs particle) results. After the shutdown [in 2013] the machine will gradually go up in energy, and if all goes well (this is non-trivial) then in about half a year the machine energy might reach design value and there might be Higgs-relevant results. So if you are thinking next week then you are mistaken. Of course, we never know what surprises nature has in store for us … It is my opinion that there is no Higgs." 
  
 "I doubt if the opinions of one who thinks about these problems perhaps every 30 years or so will carry much weight. I've been busy. But the last time I thought, I realised a) that the Higgs(-A) mechanism fits the facts too beautifully not to be true, but b) it must be incomplete, because there's no proper accounting of the vacuum energy." 
  
 [Note: Anderson essentially described the Higgs mechanism in 1962, two years before Higgs and five other physicists published the theory.] 
  
 David Kaplan, University of Washington, Seattle 
  
 "I expect some variant of the Standard Model is correct, such as a two-Higgs doublet theory, although later one could well discover the Higgs bosons to be composite particles. Discovery of neutrino masses has opened a window onto physics beyond the Standard Model, and discovery of the mass-generation mechanism for quarks and leptons will open it wider." 
  
 [Note: the two Higgs doublet model calls for five Higgs bosons] 
  
 David Curtin, Stony Brook University 
  
 "It could be the Standard Model Higgs, but I sincerely hope not. Only data will reveal what nature chose, but two of my favourite alternatives are extra dimensions and supersymmetry – their discovery would tell us incredibly exciting things about several fundamental questions, including (but not limited to) the nature of space-time itself." 
  
 "The whole idea that something should give mass to the fundamental particles is a hype that resulted from over-commercialisation of the Higgs theory, which actually might backfire on us. Fact is that in our present theoretical descriptions, most of the mass terms in the equations for the fundamental particles appear to violate an important symmetry (chiral symmetry) unless they can be connected to an additional field, the Higgs field, which would also require the existence of a not yet discovered particle, the Higgs particle … 
  
 "However, since chiral symmetry is unavoidable for the inner consistency of our description of the fundamental particles, the beautiful theoretical prediction of a Standard Model Higgs particle still stands out, and I still consider the near discovery of such a particle very likely. Alternative descriptions, such as many Higgs particles, each of which are more difficult to detect, or some altogether different mechanism, are much less attractive theoretically. As we know from the history of science, this argument does not suffice to rule out the existence of such alternatives, but I consider them much less probable." 
  
 David Miller, University of Glasgow 
  
 "Technicolor models use a new force of nature to generate particle masses. This new force is very strong, confining particles in bound states, and the binding energy gives the mass of the state. This is directly analogous to the generation of mass for the proton by the strong nuclear force." 
  
 Ian Sample is the Guardian's science correspondent and author of Massive: The missing particle that sparked the greatest hunt in science |||||
Skriv en artikel baserad på denna sammanfattning: – Higgsbosonen "Gudspartikeln" kan finnas eller kanske inte finns, och fysiker vid den stora Hadron Collidern kanske är nära att upptäcka den, men en sak är klar: Det finns några mycket entusiastiska forskare vid CERN. Rykten om att den gäckande partikeln som tros ge materia med massa har setts har cirkulerat tidigare, men experter tror att bekräftelse på dess existens äntligen kan avslöjas på det europeiska forskningslabbet nästa vecka, när team som har trålat data från 350 biljoner kollisioner släpper sina resultat, rapporterar Guardian. Teamen har successivt minskat energiområdet där Higgs kan lura, och förväntar sig att se den första glimten inom några dagar, berättar en topp CERN-forskare för BBC. CERN:s forskningschef är mer försiktig, och säger bara att "anvisningar som inte stämmer överens med dess icke-existens" kan komma upp till ytan. "Den här jakten på Higgs är som att fiska på ett uråldrigt sätt", säger han. "I stället för att använda moderna verktyg tar du bort vattnet från dammen. Det kan se tröttsamt ut men det är det enda sättet, i slutet av dagen, när man har tagit bort allt vatten från dammen för att hitta den minsta fisken."
Write an article based on this summary: – The Higgs boson "God particle" may exist or may not exist, and physicists at the great Hadron Collider may be close to discovering it, but one thing is clear: There are some very enthusiastic researchers at CERN. Rumors that the elusive particle believed to give matter with mass have been seen have circulated before, but experts believe that confirmation of its existence can finally be revealed at the European Research Lab next week, when teams that have trawled data from 350 trillion collisions drop their results, reports the Guardian. The teams have gradually reduced energy where Higgs can fool, and expect to see the first glimpse within days, a top CERN researcher tells the BBC. CERN's director of research is more cautious, saying only that "instructions not consistent with its non-existence" can surface. "This hunt for Higgs is like fishing in an ancient way," he says. "Instead of using modern tools, remove the water from the pond. It may look tiresome but it is the only way, at the end of the day, when you have removed all the water from the pond to find the smallest fish."
Bildtext Sökandet efter Higgsbosonen kan närma sig sin slutsats på Cern En respekterad forskare från Cern partikelfysiklaboratoriet har berättat för BBC att han förväntar sig att se "den första glimten" av Higgsbosonen nästa vecka. Det kommer när sökandet efter den mystiska grundpartikeln når sitt slutspel. I så fall blir detta en viktig milstolpe för lag på den berömda Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Partikelaccelereringsmaskinen på fransk-schweiziska gränsen byggdes med jakten på Higgarna som nyckelmål. Kollisionen slår samman protonstrålar i kollisioner med Higgsbosonen. Kanske i spillrorna. Higgsbosonen är ökänt svår att definiera, men dess existens hjälper oss att förstå varför partiklar har massa. Sökandet efter Higgs har blivit den hetaste jakten inom modern fysik. Det är skilt från det oväntade tillkännagivandet i september av de skenbart snabbare neutrinerna, ett resultat som fortfarande förbryllar fysikens värld, och som nyligen har intagit rampljuset. "Growing sense of excitation" Nästa tisdag kommer två olika team var att avslöja resultatet av trålning genom sina senaste data från LHC kollisioner. En talesman för ett av dessa team berättade att enbart i år har de sökt i resterna av cirka 350 biljoner kollisioner, med bara tio eller så producerar kandidater för ett tillförlitligt tecken på Higgs. De två forskargrupperna arbetar självständigt, med hjälp av två separata detektorer - kallade ATLAS och CMS - som var och en förlitar sig på olika tekniker. På så sätt ger de varandra en oberoende dubbelkontroll. Hur nära deras resultat kommer att vara överens kommer att vara ett viktigt mått på hur viktigt ett fynd de kan hävda. Lagen är svurna att hemlighålla, men olika fysikbloggar, och matsalarna på Cern, lever med prat om en eventuell observation av Higgs, och med en massa i linje med vad många fysiker skulle förvänta sig. Teamen har fokuserat på Higgs genom att utesluta energiområden där det kan ligga bakom. De förväntar sig nu att se den vid runt 120 till 125 GeV (gigelektronvolt), där en GeV handlar om massan av en proton. Professor John Ellis, en före detta chef för teoretisk fysik på Cern, berättade för Newsnights vetenskapsredaktör Susan Watts om den växande känslan av spänning på Cern, en vecka före det viktiga vetenskapsmötet nästa tisdag. "Jag tror att vi kommer att få den första glimten. LHC-experimenten har redan sett höga och låga ut för denna saknade bit. Det kan vara att den väger flera hundra gånger protonmassan, men det verkar mycket osannolikt, då finns det ett helt mellanområde där vi vet att det inte kan vara, då finns det det låga massintervallet där vi faktiskt förväntar oss att det kan vara. Det verkar finnas några ledtrådar som dyker upp där... och det är vad vi ska lära oss på tisdag". Professor Ellis, som nu är gästprofessor på Cern, och nyligen blev James Clerk Maxwell professor på King's College i London, berättade för Newsnight att hitta Higgs betyder enormt för modern fysik. "Det vi har just nu är något vi kallar standardmodellen, som beskriver all fundamental partikelfysik. Man kan tänka sig att det är ett enormt jättepussel, men det saknas en bit i mitten där. Vi har letat efter detta i 30 år nu, och slutligen, kanske, gömd under baksidan av LHC soffan ... vi äntligen hittar det". Lagen på Cern kommer inte att göra anspråk på nästa veckas resultat som en officiell "upptäckt" - en så kallad 5-sigmahändelse. Detta beror på att de ännu inte har producerat tillräckligt med experimentella data för att göra detta påstående. Det kommer nästa år, förmodligen till sommaren. Journalister uppmanas att vänta på genomgången efter nästa veckas vetenskapliga möte, men forskare som Susan Watts talade med i kaféerna i Cern hade svårt att hålla leendena från sina ansikten. Det är kanske förståeligt att forskningschefen på Cern, Sergio Bertolucci, är försiktigare än professor Ellis. Han sa till mig, något gåtfullt: "Det är för tidigt att säga ... Jag tror att vi kan få indikationer som inte överensstämmer med dess icke-existens." Han förväntar sig att nästa tisdags resultat kommer att bli mindre än den formella definitionen av "bevis", men sade att statistiken kommer att bli "mycket intressant". "Jag skulle vara mycket benägen att säga bara att vi inte kommer att ge något annat än en uppdatering som kommer att berätta för människor att vi är på en bra väg till upptäckten." Herr Bertolucci sade till Newsnight: "Den här jakten på Higgs är som att fiska på ett urgammalt sätt... istället för att använda moderna verktyg tar man bort vattnet från dammen... det kan se tröttsamt ut men det är det enda sättet, i slutet av dagen, när man har tagit bort allt vatten från dammen för att hitta den minsta fisken." Strax efter Rolf-Dieter Heuer, generaldirektören på Cern, mejlade personal om nästa tisdags seminarium om den mest eftertraktade partikeln i modern tid, rykten slog fysik bloggar att labbet äntligen kan ha fått syn på Higgs boson. Jag skrev förra veckan att cheferna för de två grupperna som arbetar med Atlas- och CMS-detektorerna på Large Hadron Collider (LHC) kommer att hålla föredragen. Det är i sig själv talande – oftast presenterar fler yngre forskare uppdateringar om sökandet efter den saknade partikeln. Förra månaden, forskare på labbet sade att om partikeln finns, var det mest troligt att ha en massa någonstans mellan 114 och 141GeV (gigaelektronvolts), där en GeV är ungefär lika med massan av en proton, en subatomär partikel som finns i atomkärnor. Ett par bloggar, bland annat viXra och Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong, har nu publicerat rykten om att Atlas- och CMS-teamen ser Higgs-liknande signaler runt 125GeV, även om de säger att bevisen inte är tillräckligt robusta för att hävda en officiell upptäckt. Om ryktena har rätt och föregår en upptäckt betyder det att Higgsboson väger lika mycket som två kopparatomer. Det stämmer ganska bra med en teori som kallas supersymmetri, som ger fysikerna ett sätt att förena de fyra kända naturkrafterna, en bedrift som frustrerade Einstein till graven. Men nu räcker det med rykten. När seminariet tillkännagavs – och innan ryktena dök upp – bad jag några fysiker att, i ett par enkla meningar, dela sina föraningar om vad som ger massa till fundamentala partiklar. Är det den enklaste versionen av Higgs-mekanismen, som ger oss vad som kallas Standard Model Higgs boson? Är det ett mer komplext Higgsfält? Eller nåt helt annat? Jag hoppades att svaren skulle ge en smak av de olika åsikter de har. De flesta kom tillbaka till mig. Några fick behålla sina svar på ett par meningar. En del av dem hade ett tekniskt språk, och kanske var det oundvikligt. En nobelpristagare sa att Higgs boson inte existerar. En annan svarade med en limerick. Innan jag räknar upp svaren, här är lite bakgrund. Higgs-mekanismen beskriver ett osynligt fält som, hävdas det, delade upp en kraft i två strax efter universums födelse. Specifikt delade den in en urgammal "elektronstråle" kraft i de elektromagnetiska och svaga krafter som vi ser i dag. Det senare ses i vissa radioaktiva sönderfallsprocesser, och är med om att skapa solsken. Higgsfältet klyver den elektrosvaga kraften genom att ge massa till de partiklar som bär den svaga kraften (W & Z-bosonerna) och lämnar den partikel som bär den elektromagnetiska kraften (fotonen) masslös. Higgsbosonen är den kvantpartikel som är associerad med Higgsfältet. Den enklaste versionen av Higgsbosonen beskrivs av Standardmodellen, en grupp ekvationer som förklarar hur kända partiklar interagerar med varandra. Det finns dock många mer komplexa versioner. En del av dessa kunde ta tio år att utesluta, enligt Matt Strassler, en fysiker vid Rutgers University i New Jersey. En poäng till. Higgsfältet är, om det är verkligt, ansvarigt för endast en liten andel av massan. Omkring 98% av massan av vardagsföremål kommer från den energi som lagras upp i partiklarna som gör atomkärnor, d.v.s. kvarkar som binds samman av gluoner inuti protoner och neutroner. Higgsfältet tros ge massa till kvarkar och elektroner, men det utgör bara en eller två procent av ett objekts massa. Låt oss säga att jag väger 80kg. Det betyder att mindre än ett kilo kommer från Higgsfältet. Här är fysikernas svar, i ingen särskild ordning: "De sade när kollideraren fortsätter Snart skulle de se att gäckande boson Mycket snart kommer vi att höra om Cern hittar den i år Men det är något jag inte kommer att satsa särskilt mycket på." "Higgs-mekanismen för att generera massor är extremt attraktiv och har ingen verklig konkurrens. Bortom det finns det lite säkerhet. En närmast minimal implementation av supersymmetri, kanske förstärkt med ultrasvaga växelverkande partiklar, är den vackraste möjligheten. Så jag skulle vilja ha flera Higgs partiklar, Higgsinos, några spöklika saker, och en ponny." [Obs: En Higgsino är en supersymmetrisk partner till en Higgs boson]. "Det är svårt att tänka på alternativ som är konsekventa teoretiskt och med allt hittills observerat som inte involverar Higgs-mekanismen – processen att i huvudsak distribuera en 'laddning' i hela vakuumet. Elementarpartiklar interagerar med denna 'laddning' och förvärvar massa. Det är dock inte nödvändigtvis klart vad som är ansvarigt för den laddningen i första hand och det är det som avgör vad experimenten kommer att se. "Jag tror fortfarande att det troligaste svaret är ett konventionellt ljus Higgs boson. Men när jag frågade vad jag trodde oddsen var i en populär föreläsning, överraskade jag mig själv med att säga 70%. Jag har till och med satsat på choklad baserat på oddsen. Om inte sant, tror jag att en tyngre komposit Higgs boson som består av mer grundläggande komponenter kan vara svaret." John Terning, University of California, Davis "Vi vet att starka interaktioner mellan kvarkar och gluoner ger huvuddelen av protonens massa; jag misstänker att det finns några nya – mycket starkt interagerande – partiklar som ger massorna för de fundamentala partiklarna. Den mest spektakulära möjligheten är att dessa nya partiklar är de magnetiska monopoler som Paul Dirac förutspådde." "Du misstar dig om Higgs-sökningen på Cern. Maskinen går på halvenergi hittills, och ingen förväntar sig relevanta (för Higgs-partikeln) resultat. Efter avstängningen [2013] maskinen kommer gradvis att gå upp i energi, och om allt går bra (detta är icke-trivial) då om ungefär ett halvår maskinenergi kan nå konstruktionsvärde och det kan vara Higgs-relevanta resultat. Så om du tänker nästa vecka så misstar du dig. Naturligtvis vet vi aldrig vad överraskningar naturen har i beredskap för oss ... Det är min åsikt att det inte finns några Higgs." "Jag tvivlar på att åsikterna hos en som tänker på dessa problem kanske vart 30:e år eller så kommer att väga mycket tungt. Jag har varit upptagen. Men sista gången jag tänkte, insåg jag a) att Higgs(-A)-mekanismen passar fakta alltför vackert för att inte vara sann, men b) den måste vara ofullständig, eftersom det inte finns någon korrekt redovisning av vakuumenergin." [Obs: Anderson beskrev i huvudsak Higgs-mekanismen 1962, två år innan Higgs och fem andra fysiker publicerade teorin.] David Kaplan, University of Washington, Seattle "Jag förväntar mig att någon variant av Standard Model är korrekt, till exempel en två-Higgs dubbelt teori, även om man senare mycket väl kunde upptäcka Higgs bosonerna för att vara sammansatta partiklar. Upptäckten av neutrinomassor har öppnat ett fönster mot fysik bortom standardmodellen, och upptäckten av massgenereringsmekanismen för kvarkar och leptons kommer att öppna den bredare." [Observera: de två Higgs dubbelt modell kräver fem Higgs bosons] David Curtin, Stony Brook University "Det kan vara Standard Model Higgs, men jag hoppas verkligen inte. Endast data kommer att avslöja vad naturen valde, men två av mina favoritalternativ är extra dimensioner och supersymmetri – deras upptäckt skulle berätta otroligt spännande saker om flera grundläggande frågor, inklusive (men inte begränsat till) själva rumstidens natur." "Hela idén att något ska ge massa till de grundläggande partiklarna är en hype som är ett resultat av en överkommersialisering av Higgs-teorin, som faktiskt kan slå tillbaka mot oss. Faktum är att i våra nuvarande teoretiska beskrivningar verkar de flesta av massbegreppen i ekvationerna för de grundläggande partiklarna bryta mot en viktig symmetri (kiralsymmetri) om de inte kan kopplas till ett ytterligare fält, Higgsfältet, som också skulle kräva existensen av en ännu inte upptäckt partikel, Higgs partikeln ... "Men, eftersom kiralsymmetri är oundviklig för den inre konsekvensen i vår beskrivning av de grundläggande partiklarna, sticker den vackra teoretiska förutsägelsen av en standardmodell Higgs partikel fortfarande ut, och jag anser fortfarande att den nära upptäckten av en sådan partikel är mycket sannolik. Alternativa beskrivningar, såsom många Higgspartiklar, som var och en är svårare att upptäcka, eller någon helt annan mekanism, är mycket mindre attraktiva teoretiskt. Som vi vet av vetenskapens historia, räcker inte detta argument för att utesluta förekomsten av sådana alternativ, men jag anser att de är mycket mindre sannolika." David Miller, University of Glasgow "Technicolor modeller använder en ny kraft av naturen för att generera partikelmassor. Denna nya kraft är mycket stark och begränsar partiklarna i bundna tillstånd, och den bindande energin ger staten dess massa. Detta är direkt jämförbart med den starka kärnkraftens massgenerering för protonen." Ian Sample är Väktarens vetenskapskorrespondent och författare till Massive: Den saknade partikeln som utlöste vetenskapens största jakt .
Caption The search for the Higgsbosone can approach its conclusion on Cern A respected researcher from the Cern particle physics laboratory has told the BBC that he expects to see "the first glimpse" of the Higgsbosone next week. It comes when the search for the mysterious basic particle reaches its playoffs. In that case, this will be an important milestone for teams on the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The particle acceleration machine on the Franco-Swiss border was built with the pursuit of the Higgs as the key target. The collision merges proton beams into collisions with the Higgs boson, possibly in the debris. The Higgs boson is notoriously difficult to define, but its existence helps us understand why particles have mass. The search for Higgs has become the hottest pursuit in modern physics. It is distinct from the unexpected announcement in September of the apparent faster neutrinos, a result which still puzzles the world of physics, and which has recently taken the spotlight. "Growing sense of excitation" Next Tuesday, two different teams will be revealing the result of trawling through their latest data from LHC collisions. A spokesman for one of these teams told us that this year alone they have searched in the remains of about 350 trillion collisions, with only ten or so producing candidates for a reliable sign of Higgs. The two research groups work independently, using two separate detectors - called ATLAS and CMS - each relying on different techniques. In this way, they give each other an independent double check. How close their results will be to agreement will be an important measure of how important a finding they can claim. The law is sworn to keep secret, but various physics blogs, and the dining rooms at Cern, live with talk of a possible observation of Higgs, and with a mass in line with what many physicists would expect. The teams have focused on Higgs by excluding energy areas where it may be behind it. They now expect to see it at around 120 to 125 GeV (gig electron volt), where a GeV is about the mass of a proton. Professor John Ellis, a former head of theoretical physics at Cern, told Newsnight's science editor Susan Watts about the growing sense of tension at Cern, a week before the important science meeting next Tuesday. "I think we'll get the first glimpse. The LHC experiments have already looked high and low for this missing piece. It may be that it weighs several hundred times the proton mass, but it seems very unlikely, then there is a whole middle area where we know it cannot be, then there is the low mass range where we actually expect it to be. There seem to be a few clues showing up there... and that's what we're going to learn on Tuesday". Professor Ellis, now a visiting professor at Cern, and recently James Clerk Maxwell became a professor at King's College in London, told Newsnight to find Higgs means enormously to modern physics. "What we have right now is something we call the standard model, which describes all fundamental particle physics. You could imagine it's a huge puzzle, but there's a piece missing in the middle there. We've been looking for this for 30 years now, and finally, maybe, hidden under the back of the LHC couch...we finally find it". The teams at Cern will not claim next week's results as an official "discovery" - a so-called 5-sigma event. This is because they have not yet produced enough experimental data to make this claim. It's coming next year, probably for the summer. Journalists are urged to wait for the briefing after next week's scientific meeting, but researchers with whom Susan Watts spoke in the cafés in Cern found it difficult to keep the smiles off their faces. It is perhaps understandable that the head of research at Cern, Sergio Bertolucci, is more cautious than Professor Ellis. He said to me, something enigmatic: "It's too early to say...I think we can get indications that don't conform to its non-existence." He expects next Tuesday's results to be less than the formal definition of "evidence", but said the statistics will be "very interesting". "I'd be very inclined to say just that we won't give anything but an update that will tell people we're on a good path to discovery." Mr. Bertolucci said to Newsnight: "This hunt for Higgs is like fishing in an ancient way... instead of using modern tools, you take the water off the pond...it may look tiresome but it's the only way, at the end of the day, when you've removed all the water from the pond to find the smallest fish." Shortly after Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the Director General of Cern, emailed staff about next Tuesday's seminar on the most coveted particle in modern times, rumors struck physics blogs that the lab may have finally spotted Higgs boson. I wrote last week that the heads of the two groups working on the Atlas and CMS detectors at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be giving the talks. It is in itself telling – usually more younger researchers present updates about the search for the missing particle. Last month, scientists at the lab said that if the particle exists, it was most likely to have a mass somewhere between 114 and 141GeV (giga electron volts), where a GeV is approximately equal to the mass of a proton, a subatomic particle found in atomic nuclei. A couple of blogs, including viXra and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong, have now published rumors that the Atlas and CMS teams see Higgs-like signals around 125GeV, although they say the evidence is not robust enough to claim an official discovery. If the rumors are right and precede a discovery, it means that Higgsboson weighs as much as two copper atoms. It fits quite well with a theory called supersymmetry, which gives the physicists a way of uniting the four known forces of nature, a feat that frustrated Einstein to the grave. But enough with the rumors. When the seminar was announced – and before the rumors came up – I asked some physicists to share their premonitions, in a few simple sentences, about what gives mass to fundamental particles. Is it the simplest version of the Higgs mechanism, which gives us what is called Standard Model Higgs boson? Is it a more complex Higgs field? Or something completely different? I was hoping the answers would give a taste of the different opinions they have. Most of them came back to me. Some had to keep their answers to a few sentences. Some of them had a technical language, and perhaps it was inevitable. A Nobel Prize winner said Higgs' boson doesn't exist. Another answered with a limerick. Before I list the answers, here's some background. The Higgs mechanism describes an invisible field which, it is claimed, divided a force into two shortly after the birth of the universe. Specifically, it divided an ancient "electron beam" force into the electromagnetic and weak forces that we see today. The latter is seen in some radioactive decay processes, and is involved in creating sunshine. The Higgs field splits the electroweak force by giving mass to the particles bearing the weak force (W & Z bosons) and leaves the particle carrying the electromagnetic force (photon) massless. The Higgs boson is the quantum particle associated with the Higgs field. The simplest version of the Higgsboson is described by the Standard Model, a group of equations that explain how known particles interact with each other. However, there are many more complex versions. Some of these could take ten years to exclude, according to Matt Strassler, a physicist at Rutgers University, New Jersey. One more point. The Higgs field is, if it is real, responsible for only a small proportion of the mass. About 98% of the mass of everyday objects comes from the energy stored in the particles that make atomic nuclei, i.e. quarks bound together by gluons inside protons and neutrons. The Higgs field is believed to give mass to quarks and electrons, but it only makes up one or two percent of an object's mass. Let's say I weigh 80 kilos. That means less than a kilo comes from the Higgs field. Here's the physicists' answer, in no particular order: "They said as the collider continues Soon they would see that elusive boson Very soon we'll hear if Cern finds it this year But that's something I won't be betting very much on." "The Higgs mechanism to generate masses is extremely attractive and has no real competition. Beyond that, there's some security. An almost minimal implementation of supersymmetry, perhaps enhanced by ultra-weak interacting particles, is the most beautiful possibility. So I'd like several Higgs particles, Higgsinos, some ghostly things, and a pony." [Note: A Higgsino is a supersymmetric partner of a Higgs boson]. "It is difficult to think of alternatives that are consistent theoretically and with everything so far observed that does not involve the Higgs mechanism – the process of distributing essentially a 'charge' throughout the vacuum. Elementary particles interact with this 'charge' and acquire mass. However, it is not necessarily clear what is responsible for that charge in the first place and that is what determines what the experiments will see. "I still think the most likely answer is a conventional light Higgs boson. But when I asked what I thought the odds were in a popular lecture, I surprised myself by saying 70%. I've even been betting on chocolate based on the odds. If not true, I think a heavier composite Higgs boson made up of more basic components may be the answer." John Terning, University of California, Davis "We know that strong interactions between quarks and gluons give the bulk of the proton mass; I suspect there are some new – very strongly interacting – particles that provide the masses for the fundamental particles. The most spectacular possibility is that these new particles are the magnetic monopolies predicted by Paul Dirac." "You're mistaken about the Higgs search on Cern. The machine runs on semi-energy so far, and no one expects relevant (for the Higgs particle) results. After the shutdown [2013] the machine will gradually go up in energy, and if everything goes well (this is non-trivial) then if about six months of machine energy can reach design value and it can be Higgs-relevant results. So if you think next week, you're mistaken. Of course we never know what surprises nature has in store for us...It's my opinion that there are no Higgs." "I doubt that the views of one who thinks about these problems may weigh very heavily every 30 years or so. I've been busy. But the last time I thought, I realized (a) that the Higgs(-A) mechanism fits the facts too beautifully to not be true, but (b) it must be incomplete, because there is no accurate accounting of the vacuum energy." [Note: Anderson essentially described the Higgs mechanism in 1962, two years before Higgs and five other physicists published the theory.] David Kaplan, University of Washington, Seattle "I expect some variant of Standard Model to be accurate, such as a two-Higgs double theory, although later one could very well detect the Higgs bosons for being composite particles. The discovery of neutrinomassos has opened a window towards physics beyond the standard model, and the discovery of the mass generation mechanism for quarks and leptons will open the wider one." [Note: the two Higgs double model requires five Higgs bosons] David Curtin, Stony Brook University "It may be Standard Model Higgs, but I certainly hope not. Only data will reveal what nature chose, but two of my favorite options are extra dimensions and supersymmetry—their discovery would tell incredibly exciting things about several basic issues, including (but not limited to) the nature of space time itself." "The whole idea that something should give mass to the basic particles is a hype that is the result of an over-commercialization of Higgs theory, which can actually backfire against us. In fact, in our current theoretical descriptions, most of the mass concepts of the equations of the basic particles seem to violate an important symmetry (kiral symmetry) if they cannot be linked to an additional field, the Higgs field, which would also require the existence of a yet undetected particle, the Higgs particle ... "But, since kiral symmetry is inevitable for the inner consistency of our description of the basic particles, the beautiful theoretical prediction of a standard model Higgs particle still stands out, and I still believe that the near discovery of such a particle is very likely. Alternative descriptions, such as many Higgs particles, each of which is more difficult to detect, or any completely different mechanism, are much less attractive theoretically. As we know from the history of science, this argument is not enough to rule out the existence of such alternatives, but I think they are much less likely." David Miller, University of Glasgow "Technicolor models use a new force of nature to generate particle masses. This new force is very strong and limits the particles in bound states, and the binding energy gives the state its mass. This is directly comparable to the mass generation of strong nuclear power for the proton." Ian Sample is the Guardian's science correspondent and author of Massive: The missing particle that triggered the greatest pursuit of science .