Read the 2013 update on the discovery of the Higgs boson.
Update on the Higgs Discovery
In early November 2000, CERN ended its
one month extension of the LEP
experiment. The extension had been granted with the hope of clearing up
the somewhat ambiguous situation concerning the Higgs discovery. The
final results are in and the situation has
not been clarified. There are four clean candidate events leading to
about 95% confidence that the Higgs has been seen. Because of the
extraordinary importance of the Higgs, CERN
experimentalists are unable to definitively say that they have
uncovered the particle. If they have succeeded, the Higgs mass
is around 115 GeV/c2 (for comparative
purposes the mass of the proton
is 0.94 GeV/c2).
CERN now begins construction
of the LHC (large hadronic collider), which could not be delayed further. It
will take about five years to build and allow scientists to explore higher energies,
make new discoveries (including that of the Higgs particle), and to probe
new short-distance properties of nature.
To the Main Page on the Higgs Discovery
To the Jupiter Scientific's Science Information Page
This update was prepared by the staff of
Jupiter Scientific,
an organization devoted to the promotion of
science through books, the internet
and other means of communication.
This web page may NOT be copied onto other web
sites, but other sites may link to this page.
Copyright ©2000 by Jupiter Scientific