America leads in the race for Higgs boson

Laboratory news in the world of particle physics rarely comes bigger than developments that concern Higgs boson, and scientists in America have been making the headlines this week as they step closer to proving the existence of the so-called 'God particle'.

The elusive particle supplies mass to matter and would complete Albert Einstein's theory of the universe. Researchers at Fermilab outside Chicago have produced some 1,000 Higgs particles over a decade of work, analysing data from some 500 trillion sub-atomic particle collisions designed to emulate conditions after the Big Bang.

Rob Roser, a physicist at Fermilab, near Chicago, said: “Unfortunately, this hint is not significant enough to conclude that the Higgs boson exists.”

"The image scientists have of the short-lived Higgs particles, which almost immediately decay into other particles, is still slightly 'fuzzy'."

The probability of the results being a statistical fluke was one in 250, which is close to the threshold of 1 in 740 that physics has set to establish proof of a sub-atomic particle's existence. The weight of the Higgs particles found in the laboratory were consistent with results from the more powerful particle accelerator at the CERN research centre near Geneva, Switzerland.

Posted by Claire Manning