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| Large Hadron Collider: BBC News |
Ender's Game is a Sci Fi novel by Orson Scott Card, the lead character's name is Andrew Wiggin, or "Ender" because of his capacity to end conflicts quite violently, and decisively (see link). Using it as title and double entendre twice over - Higgs Boson, Endgame - here's the latest from the LHC - and, a new unit for you: an inverse femtobarn (1 femto = 1 x 10-15, read the article for what a barn is, ;-)).
Earlier this month, physicists announced results of a combined search for the Higgs by the Atlas and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Their analysis, presented at a meeting in Paris, shows that physicists have now covered a large chunk of the search area in detail, ruling out a broad part of the mass range where the boson could be lurking.
An even more important milestone in the Higgs hunt beckons in December.
The Higgs explains why other particles have mass, making it crucial to our understanding of the Universe. But it has never been observed by experiments.
Finding the Higgs boson at a mass of 476 GeV (gigaelectronvolts, giga = billion = 1 x 109) or more is considered highly unlikely.
This means that physicists are now focussing their hunt on the remaining "low mass" range - a small window between 114 GeV and 141 GeV.
BBC News: 'Moment of truth' approaching in Higgs boson hunt
Their analysis, presented at a meeting in Paris, shows that physicists have now covered a large chunk of the search area in detail, ruling out a broad part of the mass range where the boson could be lurking.
An even more important milestone in the Higgs hunt beckons in December.
The Higgs explains why other particles have mass, making it crucial to our understanding of the Universe. But it has never been observed by experiments.
Finding the Higgs boson at a mass of 476 GeV (gigaelectronvolts, giga = billion = 1 x 109) or more is considered highly unlikely.
This means that physicists are now focussing their hunt on the remaining "low mass" range - a small window between 114 GeV and 141 GeV.
BBC News: 'Moment of truth' approaching in Higgs boson hunt
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