The Verge - The Higgs boson: CERN's quest to discover the elusive God particle

The Large Hadron Collider and processing data at a million gigabytes per second

2012-08-03T15:53:26Z

Using the Large Hadron Collider, CERN recently discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs boson, but preliminary results are far from conclusive. ITNews sat down with David Foster, CERN's deputy head of IT, to discuss what it takes to calculate the massive amounts of data associated with such experiments and how the organization is planning for the future. With each collision, raw data is filtered through thousands of machines at CERN's data center at a mind-boggling speed of a petabyte (one million gigabytes) per second, then is instantly distributed to additional facilities for further processing by using grid technology. Of course, the intricacies of the organization's data infrastructure are far more complicated. Fortunately,...

Large Hadron Collider's secrets revealed in dramatic photo set

2012-07-07T15:43:25Z

In a special photographic feature yesterday, The Atlantic published 34 pictures showing the construction of the Large Hadron Collider, the massive particle accelerator that made this week's discovery possible. It's a dramatic set — aside from our favorite above, which shows the interior of the LHC, there are detailed photographs of the individual parts and of the computing grid that processes the results. It's been a heavy few days for CERN-centric news, but this is one feature that's really worth checking out — head over to The Atlantic for the full story.

What is the Higgs boson?

2012-07-05T13:04:58Z

Since the discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson yesterday, a lot of people have been trying to work out what exactly it is. Scientists at CERN presented their findings in a highly technical presentation — despite being written in Comic Sans, it went over the heads of much of the assembled scientific press, not to mention the thousands of amateurs following the announcement via Twitter and the livestream. Thankfully, experts around the world and across the internet have taken it upon themselves to enlighten the particle-watching public — here are our four favourite explanations.

1. The Guardian's science correspondent Ian Sample uses ping pong balls, sugar and a tray from the cafeteria to provide a surprisingly...

Stephen Hawking on how the Higgs boson discovery cost him $100

2012-07-05T00:30:22Z

This morning scientists at CERN announced that they had indeed discovered a new particle that appears to be consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson. The BBC spoke with physicist Stephen Hawking, who described the implications of the finding — while also mentioning a losing wager he'd placed on whether the particle would be found. Check out the video below to see one of our greatest minds discuss an incredible discovery.

CERN scientists inexplicably present Higgs boson findings in Comic Sans

2012-07-04T08:56:08Z

For many of us, the most shocking revelation to come out of CERN's Higgs boson announcement today was quite unrelated to the science itself. Rather, we were blown away by the fact that a team made up of some of the most undoubtedly brilliant people in the world believe that Comic Sans is an appropriate font for such a historic occasion.

@ProfBrianCox what's with the shit slides! Where is Alice?
— Vincent Connare (@VincentConnare) July 4, 2012

While criticizing the much-maligned typeface is almost as much of a cliché as using it by now, and there could even have been worse choices, Comic Sans designer Vincent Connare seems to agree that his infamous creation isn't quite the best match for particle physics announcements....

CERN announces discovery of new particle consistent with Higgs boson

2012-07-04T07:38:51Z

Scientists at CERN say they've found a new particle consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson with 5-sigma certainty — a false positive probability of about 1 in 9 trillion. Evidence of the particle's existence in the 126GeV mass range was gleaned from the CMS (video below) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva. CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela explains, "this is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found."

Definitely a new particle, but is it the Higgs?

Before the particle can be determined to be the Standard Model Higgs, scientists will need to find out more about its properties in order to rule out the possibility that it's something "more exotic." While...

Watch this: CERN now broadcasting update on Higgs boson live

2012-07-04T06:56:58Z

CERN is holding a seminar to update the world on the progress it has made searching for the elusive Higgs boson. Experiments have been conducted with the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN's labs in Switzerland since 2008, and rumors are flying that the hypothesized Higgs boson may finally have been tracked down. If so, it would all but confirm the validity of the Standard Model of physics. CERN has information about the event at its website, or you can watch the stream live below — it's set to kick off any minute now.

CERN confirms its mistake, neutrinos obey the speed limit of light after all

2012-06-08T11:52:16Z

CERN has confirmed that the anomalous results which indicated that neutrinos traveled faster than the speed of light were caused by faulty machinery. The findings were reported on heavily last September, and since then scientists the world over have been trying to explain how the neutrinos broke one of the fundamental laws of physics. Earlier this year, there was word that the team behind the results had found possible faults in its test equipment, and the error has now been confirmed.

While it may seem like a huge blow to the team, CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci was pragmatic in his summary of the events. He thanked the scientific community for its collaboration on finding the error, and explained why mishaps like this show...