Far out cosmology: LHC spots a possible new particle (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 17, 2015, 21:36 (3262 days ago) @ David Turell

Matt Strassler covered this yesterday on his blog, but I didn't post it, as too technically advanced. This article is simpler and what is found is a blip by two methods off the curve created by a collision of protons. It is heavier than Higgs.-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/potential-new-particle-shows-up-at-the-lhc-thrilling-and-confounding-physicists1/?WT.mc_id=SA_DD_20151217-"A little wiggle on a graph, representing just a handful of particles, has set the world of physics abuzz. Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, the largest particle accelerator on Earth, reported yesterday that their machine might have produced a brand new particle not included in the established laws of particle physics known as the Standard Model. Their results, based on the data collected from April to November after the LHC began colliding protons at nearly twice the energy of its previous runs, are too inconclusive to be sure—many physicists warned that the wiggle could just as easily represent a statistical fluke. Nevertheless, the finding has already spawned at least 10 new papers in less than a day proposing a theoretical explanation for the particle, and has the halls and blackboards of physics departments around the world churning.-“'This is something that we've been waiting for for a long time,” says Adam Falkowski, a physicist at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Warsaw and a member of the CERN Theory Group. “Of course we are aware this could be nothing. But for my generation, this is the first time there is a very large, quite reliable signal of physics beyond the Standard Model, so it's definitely very exciting.” Of course, others echoed the usual refrain of caution: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this is not that,” Columbia University physicist Peter Woit wrote on his blog."-Comment: If this is real it is beyond the standard Model which ended with Higgs.