article that appeared in Panorama.it
http://blog.panorama.it/hitechescienza/2009/02/20/sinfiamma-la-corsa-per-la-particella-di-dio the-American-close-to-discovery /
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator of CERN Geneva activated for the first time last September and turned off shortly days later for a fault which makes it currently unusable, was constructed over the past 10 years, with the stated aim of demonstrating the existence of the Higgs boson.
What is (imaginatively) called the "God particle" because it would explain why the particles (and therefore all that exists in the universe) have a mass, is the last missing particle in the Standard Model of subnuclear . In 1995, in fact, two separate groups of scientists at Fermilab , the accelerator is located in the U.S. state of New York, have "found" the other particle is missing, the Top Quark.
According to scientists, the discovery of the Higgs, whose existence was hypothesized by the physicist Peter Higgs in the 60's and seems to be supported by a number of mathematical theories, it is essential to understanding the structure of the universe and explain why there are dark matter and energy (which make up the Most of the Universe). For this has been invested billions of Euros in the construction of the LHC, in theory, should be so powerful as to accelerate (and to collide) particles "heavier" (hadrons) which give more opportunities to discover the Higgs.
But it seems that scientists at Fermilab, optimizing the old accelerator at their disposal, they might be able to prove the existence of the Higgs before the end of next year. It would be a mockery of the scientists of CERN, who are currently working flat out to turn the LHC but probably will not be able to make the first test until the end of 2009.
all depends on the actual size of the Higgs. According to the mathematical theories the particle missing mass will be included between 184 and 114 GeV (GeV = Gigaelectron Volt: a proton has a mass of 0.938 GeV). The last tests done to rule out a mass of 170 GeV, but closer to the mass of the Higgs is 170 GeV, the greater the chances of success for Fermilab: a Higgs of 150 GeV could be discovered by the end of next summer, and if the mass was around 120 GeV would be until the end of 2010, with the ability to return to CERN in the race.
is clearly not a real race, many of the scientists working on the two accelerator experiments at Fermilab Tevatron (CDF and DZero) also work at CERN (and vice versa) and the U.S. itself have contributed more than half a billion dollars to the construction the European center. If the Higgs were identified by Fermilab, in addition, the discovery would still be confirmed by another independent experiment.
CERN, which, through experiments ATALS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb, is a giant leap forward in this field from the technological point of view, will be the global center of research on sub-nuclear physics in the coming decades and could then use the discovery of the Higgs to carry out new experiments and studies in the field of matter and dark energy.
Other discussions about what is really going crazy need to find this elusive particle whose existence has been theorized but never demonstrated despite decades of costly research. Thanks to the Higgs, it could explain the theories relating to the Big Bang and dark energy, as if its existence should be excluded, all the modern subnuclear should be reconsidered. Practical applications of this discovery are difficult to imagine but, in addition to being one of the most ambitious projects of international collaboration, CERN, however, already offered many contributions to the modern world in terms of technologies, the development of optical media (CD) to the Internet and GRID (distributed computing).
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