South African scientists contributed significantly
towards the knowledge base that helped an international experiment make a
breakthrough in proving a particle discovered in July 2012 is a type of Higgs
boson, a finding that could be the most substantial physics discovery of
our time.
The Higgs particle is the missing piece of the Standard
Model of Physics, a set of rules that outline the fundamental building blocks
of the universe, such as protons, electrons and atoms. Finding it starts a new era for science, because
scientists will be able to probe previously uninvestigated parts of the
universe.
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN)
yesterday said the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had found
new results on an important property of the Higgs particle. The discovery of
the elusive particle was announced almost two years ago.
Home-grown
contribution
Bruce Mellado, an associate professor at the University
of the Witwatersrand's School of Physics, says the finding is "certainly
an important milestone in determining that what we discovered is a Higgs
boson". He notes the ATLAS experiment, in which SA is involved, has
reported a similar result.
Locally, about 70 South Africans are involved in the
global project and, while the team is small in comparison to those from other
countries, there are substantial
benefits coming out of its involvement. Four universities are participating
in the programme: Wits, University of Cape Town, the University of
Johannesburg, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
As a result, says Mellado, SA has contributed
"significantly" towards the knowledge base that paved the way for
yesterday's announcement. The Higgs boson gives matter mass and holds the
physical fabric of the universe together.
Missing piece
The particle is named after Peter Higgs, who, in the
1960s, was one of six authors who theorised about the existence of the
particle. It is commonly called the "God Particle", after the title
of Nobel physicist Leon Lederman's "The God Particle: If the Universe Is
the Answer, What Is the Question?" (1993), according to Wikipedia.
Yesterday's announcement, hailed as a major breakthrough,
is the result of work done at the LHC, the £2.6 billion "Big Bang"
particle accelerator at the centre of the hunt for the Higgs boson. The LHC has
been dubbed the world's largest experiment and is housed at CERN.
The LHC is the largest scientific instrument ever built.
It lies in an underground tunnel with a circumference of 27km that straddles
the French-Swiss border, near Geneva, and has been heralded as the most
important new
physics discovery machine of all time.
"With our ongoing analyses, we are really starting
to understand the mechanism in depth," says CMS spokesperson Tiziano
Camporesi. "So far, it is behaving exactly as predicted by theory."
The LHC was offline for maintenance and upgrading during
the last 18 months, and preparations are now under way for it to restart early
in 2015 for its second three-year run. The experiment will run until 2030 and
will be upgraded to 10 times its initial design specification, with the ability
to collect 100 times more data.
"Much work has been carried out on the LHC over the
last 18 months or so, and it's effectively a new machine, poised to set us on
the path to new discoveries," says CERN DG Rolf Heuer.
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