El bosó de Higgs una mica més a prop

Ahir tothom mirava cap a Ginebra i avui, des de Catquímica, n’havíem de parlar.

Des del CERN havien anunciat una important roda de premsa per parlar del bosó de Higgs, la partícula de Déu, ahir a les 14 h. Després d’un directe seguit arreu del món, emès per streaming pel web del CERN, amb les explicacions de Fabiola Gianotti, portanveu del detector Atlas, vàrem veure que la partícula encara no ha estat trobada, però que s’ha acotat molt en la regió en la que es pot trobar, així com la massa que pot tenir.

Ahir, després de la presentació en directe, el mateix CERN va publicar el comunicat de premsa al seu web:

In a seminar held at CERN today, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. Their results are based on the analysis of considerably more data than those presented at the summer conferences, sufficient to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the elusive Higgs. The main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 116-130 GeV by the ATLAS experiment, and 115-127 GeV by CMS. Tantalising hints have been seen by both experiments in this mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery.

La recerca segueix i, segons els investigadors, el proper any pot ésser clau en la persecució del bosó de Higgs.

“We have restricted the most likely mass region for the Higgs boson to 116-130 GeV, and over the last few weeks we have started to see an intriguing excess of events in the mass range around 125 GeV,” explained ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti.“This excess may be due to a fluctuation, but it could also be something more interesting. We cannot conclude anything at this stage. We need more study and more data. Given the outstanding performance of the LHC this year, we will not need to wait long for enough data and can look forward to resolving this puzzle in 2012.”

Aquest és el present i el futur de la recerca científica. Realment apassionant!

Tota la informació a:

• http://public.web.cern.ch/public/
• http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR25.11E.html
• http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21279-lhc-sees-hint-of-lightweight-higgs-boson.html
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16116230