YOU can鈥檛 hide for much longer, Higgs. A deluge of data from the Large Hadron Collider has ruled out a slew of possible masses for the still theoretical Higgs particle.
鈥淲e are definitely approaching the endgame in looking for the Higgs,鈥� says James Gillies, spokesman for CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, where the LHC is based. Data released from the LHC鈥檚 ATLAS and CMS detectors have now ruled out, with 95 per cent confidence, all masses for the elusive Higgs between 145 and 466 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).
鈥淎 deluge of new data means we are definitely approaching the endgame in looking for the Higgs鈥�
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The Higgs is thought to give all other particles mass. If it exists, it is most likely hiding out between 115 and 145 GeV. That rules out the bulk of the mass range that is easiest to explore. Teams at the LHC hope to double the amount of data collected by the end of this year, but they will need to double that again to confirm if the Higgs is within the remaining range. That should take the better part of a year, Gillies says: 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to give the impression that the answer is just around the corner.鈥�
If the Higgs isn鈥檛 there, we will have to come up with another explanation for why matter has mass, or embrace other, stranger versions of the Higgs that aren鈥檛 part of the standard model of physics, the leading theory for how particles and forces interact.
The new results were revealed on 22 August at the Lepton-Photon conference in Mumbai, India.