Recently there has been potentially very exciting
news from the Large Hadron Collider. The Large
Hadron Collider is — quoted as the largest
machine ever built by human beings just outside
of Geneva, Switzerland. It collides two beams
of protons, the collisions are the highest
energy ever produced by humans and ever recorded.
And that data allows us to probe in essence
the structure of matter and of space-time
itself. The Large Hadron Collider started
up operations last year again after a long
shutdown and is running at almost twice the
energy it was before. In the first run the
collider discovered the Higgs boson, which
is the last particle of the standard model
and a key piece of understanding how matter
was created in the early universe and exists
today. What has been seen now in the new data
is potentially a particle that has no room
to fit in the standard model. It would be
something that upends the standard model of
particle physics and so physicists all over
the place are very excited that we may be
on the verge of seeing something big. The
particles decays, if it's true, into two photons.
What's actually seen in the collider are two
particles of light coming out at an energy
at roughly six times the energy of the Higgs
boson. So it implies the existence of a new
particle which is six times as heavy as the
Higgs, is brand new and we don't know what
it is. To see something totally random is
incredibly exciting. That's when the fun begins.
You don't know what it's going to be so you
get to play what the hell is that. So that's
where we are right now. It could easily go
away. July comes, well we got more data, it's
not really there. It was a random fluctuation.
That happens all the time. This one is a little
bit more exciting than most because the signal
was stronger than usual. And theoretically
to explain it, it's actually very simple.
Which makes you think, maybe this is more
plausible. Keep an eye on the science news
— right here, in fact — in the summer
and you'll find out as we do if there's anything
to be really excited about.
