Higgs? CERN sees new particle consistent with elusive boson
CERN’s ATLAS and CMS experiments have observed a new particle – consistent with the elusive Higgs boson – in the mass region around 125-126 GeV/c2, it was announced during a seminar at the Swiss-based laboratory on 4 July.
“The five sigma signal – at around 125 GeV – we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies…
“Relativistic heavy ion collisions” town meeting
A one-day town meeting on relativistic heavy ion collisions will be held on 29 June this year in the Council Chamber at CERN, Geneva. The event is in anticipation of, and aims to gather input for, an update to the European Strategy for Particle Physics.
Topics under discussion at the meeting will include soft probes, flow and hydrodynamic response of the medium; hard probes and quarkonia; and future opportunities for colliders and fixed target experiments…
OPERA: second neutrino tau interaction
The observation of a second neutrino tau interaction at the Gran Sasso Laboratory was announced by the OPERA Collaboration during the 25th Neutrino Conference, in Kyoto, earlier this month. This result follows on from the first observation, made in 2010.
With this new result the OPERA detector is back on track to its original motivations, after a noisy excursion over the measurement of the neutrino time of flight. The OPERA experiment was designed to search for the rare…
Businesses develop CERN tech in access scheme
CERN technologies are being made available to companies as part of a new knowledge transfer programme which was launched earlier this month. The scheme – CERN Easy Access Intellectual Property [IP] – aims to promote the development of CERN technology into real-world applications.
“Sometimes our technologies are too early stage for a company to risk investment. By offering free access, we aim to encourage our partners to evaluate and commercialise those technologies…
Symposium on Strategy for Particle Physics
The CERN Council Open Symposium on the European Strategy for Particle Physics will be held in Kraków, Poland, on 10-12 September this year. The event, held in anticipation of the Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, aims to review the status of particle physics research and the preparation for future facilities.
The physics community was encouraged to submit input prior to the symposium. Such is published…
CERN tech to foster new UK businesses with STFC
Small UK companies will be turning ground-breaking CERN research into real-world technological applications, through a new collaboration between the European research laboratory and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council [STFC]. The scheme aims to help nurture up-and-coming businesses, bridging the gap between science and industry.
“Small companies with a real mission to innovate will benefit from this initiative by CERN and STFC, which brings together some of the most advanced technologies in the world with the unique and focused business support…
Hungarian Centre wins CERN IT contract
The CERN data centre earlier this month. The Wigner centre will accommodate CERN equipment which will boost both the capabilities and the security of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid.
“Installing computing capacity at the Wigner Centre allows us to power additional equipment, as well as secure our operations, due to the remote nature of the resources” said Frédéric Hemmer, the head of CERN’s IT Department…
2012 European Physical Society Council
Representatives from all European Physical Society [EPS] Member Societies, Divisions and Groups met for the 2012 EPS Council, which was held on 30-31 March at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland.
As with every even year, elections were a major item on the agenda. John Dudley, of France’s Université de Franche-Comté, was elected the incoming president of the EPS. Dudley is a past chair of the EPS Quantum Electronics and Optics Division, and was the initial proposer for the International Year of Light…
2012 EPS Forum Physics and Society
The 5th meeting of the European Physical Society’s Forum Physics and Society [FPS] was held at CERN, Geneva, on 28-29 March this year. The event, which focussed on the topic of “physicists in the market place”, was held prior to the 2012 European Physical Society [EPS] Council.
The purpose of the meeting was to explore the challenges experienced by physicists, leaving their usual fields of study, who pursue alternative careers outside of teaching and university-based research…
LHC delivers collisions at record energy
After a three-month winter maintenance stop, the Large Hadron Collider [LHC] at CERN has resumed operation, with beams, on 14 March. Two days later, low intensity beams were accelerated to 4 TeV for the first time, achieving a new world record.
During the preceding month, all machine components – including almost 2,000 superconducting magnet circuits – were tested for operation at currents which allow these accelerating beams of up to 4 TeV…
Students “hangout” with CMS physicists on Google+
The Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the LHC [CMS] recently organised two virtual visits to the CMS experimental cavern, around 100 meters underground, using the Google+ Hangouts platform. Schools, universities and interested members of the public were invited to remotely connect with physicists in front of the CMS detector and in the above-ground control room, to talk about the detector, the LHC, and the physics goals of the collaboration.
Google+ Hangouts, a feature of the new social network, are multi-user video calls with up to ten participants…
ALPHA takes measurement of antihydrogen atoms
The ALPHA collaboration at CERN has undertaken the first measurements of the antihydrogen spectrum, reported the journal Nature last week. This initial development may pave the way towards a better understanding of why our universe is matter-based.
“We’ve demonstrated that we can probe the internal structure of the antihydrogen atom,” said ALPHA collaboration spokesman, Jeffrey Hangst. “…we’re very excited about that. We now know that it’s possible to design…
