Physicists suspect a second Higgs boson is found - heavier than the first
The Large Hadron Collider continues to amaze. A few years ago, physicists discovered the Higgs boson by colliding and shattering protons traveling at the speed of light in a giant ring at the speed of light. Let it be indirectly - in the wake of its decay, but it was discovered. For which the scientists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson - François Engler and, in fact, Peter Higgs himself in 2013 were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.
Higgs shed tears when he learned that his boson and God had been discovered
In experiments that took place in December 2015, protons were pounded with a vengeance. As a result, a particle unknown to science was knocked out of the universe. After flying out, it disintegrated into photons. Their energy made it possible to estimate the mass of the unknown particle - about 750 gigaelectronvolts. And assume that a second Higgs boson has been detected, which is 6 times heavier than the first one knocked out in the experiments of 2011 and 2012. Physicists talked about this at a conference that was recently held in Italy - in the Alps.
Collisions of protons with doubled shook out a new particle from the universe
According to theory, the one - the first - the Higgs boson gives mass to matter in the Universe, making all other particles "weighty". Therefore, it is called a divine particle. Or a piece of God. It was she who was missing for the final triumph of the Standard Model, which explains the structure of our universe. Just one particle.
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The Higgs boson was found. The Standard Model has triumphed - there is no longer any need to revise it and look for some new physics. However, the second Higgs boson ruined everything, since its existence was not envisaged by the Standard Model. That is, it should not be. And he seems to be …
What and what does the second boson endow? Is this another divine particle? There are no exact answers. There is still not enough statistical data for one more Higgs boson to be recognized as real. But the likelihood of this is high - the researchers of two detectors - CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) and ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) independently stumbled upon traces of an unknown particle.
One of the detectors that recorded the decay of the second Higgs boson.
Perhaps, if the discovery is confirmed, it will still be necessary to invent a new physics, in which there are much more particles than in the old one.
Some hot scientific heads fantasize: what if the second Higgs boson indicates the existence of a certain fifth fundamental force - in addition to the known four: gravity, electromagnetic interaction, strong and weak nuclear interaction?
Or does the new particle - since it is so heavy - belong to the same dark matter, which is supposedly full in the Universe, but which cannot be detected in any way?
Physicists at a crossroads. New experiments at the LHC can be started anywhere. But they won't let you get bored.
ON THE OTHER HAND
Physicists are not afraid of the search for new physics
Scientists, by the way, were not going to rest on one Higgs boson. And the search for approaches to new physics did not frighten them. Indeed, in a series of experiments on a modernized LHC - doubled capacity, which will end in 2018 - just in time for the World Cup in Russia, I would like this:
1. Get dark matter. According to theory, this substance in our Universe is already 85 percent. But practically it is still elusive. It is not known what dark matter consists of, where, how and why it is hidden.
Physicists are not sure that they will be able to see dark matter directly - they expect to register the particles into which it decays. By the way, the Higgs boson was discovered in a similar way.
2. Knock out some exotic particles from the protons - for example, supersymmetric ones, which are heavier versions of ordinary particles. In theory, they should exist again.
3. Understand where the antimatter has gone. According to the existing physical theories, our world should not exist. After all, as we are assured, it was formed as a result of the Big Bang, when something incredibly tiny and incredibly dense suddenly "exploded", expanded and turned into matter. However, together with it, antimatter was obliged to form - exactly the same amount as matter. Then they were to annihilate - that is, disappear with a flash of light. The result is no universe. However, it is available. And if so, then as a result of something there was more matter than antimatter. Which led, in the end, to the emergence of all things. But what caused the fruitful opening bias? And where, in the end, did all the antimatter go? Unsolvable riddles. They will try to solve them, receiving antimatter particles in experiments at the LHC.
4. Find out if there are additional dimensions. The theory fully admits that in our world there are not three dimensions - length, height, width (X, Y, Z), but much more. From this, they say, and gravity manifests itself much weaker than other fundamental interactions. Her powers go to other dimensions.
Physicists believe that it is possible to prove the existence of extra dimensions. To do this, you need to find particles that can exist only with additional dimensions. Accordingly, in new experiments at the LHC, they - physicists - will try to do this.
5. Arrange something like the creation of the world. Physicists intend to reproduce the first moments of the life of the universe. Experiments in which, instead of protons, much heavier lead ions will collide should allow to return to the very origins. And to produce a substance that appeared about 13.7 billion years ago immediately after the Big Bang. And as a result of it. After all, it was from this puzzling event that the creation of the world allegedly took place. And at first in it - the world - there were no atoms, let alone molecules, and there was only the so-called quark-gluon plasma. It is the lead ions broken after head-on collisions that will generate it to smithereens.
Previous similar experiments did not clarify much - there was not enough collision power. Now it has been doubled. And the plasma should be the same as the newborn Universe consisted of.
According to one hypothesis, as soon as it appeared, the Universe did not behave like a gas. As previously suggested. Rather, it was liquid - dense and super-hot. And the expression "quark-gluon soup", which was applied to the primary matter in it, may turn out to be more than just figurative.
Alternatively, an incredibly hot gas was created first, then it turned into something hot and liquid. And only then - from this - the world around us gradually began to "emerge". Perhaps new experiments at prohibitive power will allow a more accurate understanding of the primary matter. And determine if it was liquid or gaseous.
Nuclear physicists want to understand how the universe works
REFERENCE
Giant bagel
Physicists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) re-launched their cyclopean machine - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), aka Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which underwent modernization on June 3, 2015. The collision energy of protons in previous experiments was 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV). And now it has been brought up to 14 TeV.
When the LHC was just built, one of the physicists gave birth to the aphorism: "We will try to see what happens and try to understand what it means." Now the aphorism has become even more relevant.
Representatives of 100 countries, more than 10 thousand scientists and specialists, including several hundred from Russia, participated in the creation of the LHC and in subsequent experiments.
The LHC is a donut-shaped proton accelerator with a diameter of 27 kilometers. It is buried at depths of 50 to 175 meters on the border of Switzerland and France. Lined with superconducting - particle-accelerating magnets, cooled by liquid helium. Two beams of particles move around the ring in opposite directions and collide at almost the speed of light (0.9999 from it). And shatter into smithereens: into such a number of fragments, into which nothing could be shattered before. The results are recorded using huge ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb detectors.
Large Hadron Collider Ring
Scientists are aiming to bring the number of collisions to a billion per second. The beams of protons traveling along the collider ring follow the so-called packets. So far there are 6 packets, each containing about 100 billion protons. Further, the number of packages will be increased to 2808.
The experiments, which lasted from 2009 to 2013, and the current series - on the modernized collider - did not cause any cataclysms: neither global nor local. Most likely it will carry over in the future. True, there are plans to bring the energy of collisions of protons to 33 teraelectronvolts (TeV). This is more than twice as much as in the experiments that are going on now.
Vladimir LAGOVSKY