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From CERN: ATLAS and CMS experiments present Higgs search status

13 December 2011: In a seminar held at CERN today, the ATLAS and CMS3 experiments presented the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson.

Around the World

CM2 assembly nearly complete

Fermilab’s CM2 is in the final stages of assembly. It will come online in the spring.

by Leah Hesla

Fermilab will soon begin operating CM2, a significant advancement in work on superconducting radiofrequency research that will serve the ILC community and Fermilab in building and operating future accelerators.

Research Director's Report

Detector R&D “coopetition” between ILC and CLIC

by Juan Fuster

Though the differences between ILC and CLIC detectors are marked, ILC detector concepts have been shown to be valuable for the machine being designed by its competitor-cooperator, the CLIC design study.

Director's Corner

Recovery from March 2011 earthquake at ATF, KEK

by Toshiaki Tauchi

Restoration of the Accelerator Test Facility is in its final stage at KEK, Japan, where the ATF2 project, the final focus test beam for ILC, is being conducted with an international collaboration.

Image of the week

Atwitter over Higgs

The twitter chatter over CERN's Higgs news on Tuesday was nonstop, enough to prompt New Scientist to remind us, in a tweet about the Durban conference, "it's not ALL about the #Higgs you know".

In the News

  • from The Guardian
    13 December 2011
    Discovery will simply raise more fundamental questions: that is why, long before the LHC was switched on, the particle physicists of Europe and America began devising plans for an International Linear Collider, to answer questions raised by the discovery of the Higgs or, even more thrillingly, the discovery that it does not exist – that something is wrong with the standard model of the making of a universe.
  • from The Telegraph
    13 December
    …”126 GeV would be a convenient value for a new linear collider; if it existed at that mass range, we could then study the Higgs further,”…
  • from Discover Magazine
    13 December 2011
    Further, such a light SM-like Higgs boson provides strong motivation for a linear electron-positron collider of low center-of-mass energy. Studies suggest that only such a collider can easily measure the properties of such a light Higgs boson at the few percent level, although the LHC might not do that much worse depending upon future improvements and upgrades
  • from Reuters
    13 December 201
    “We don’t call it the ‘God particle’, it’s just the media that do that,” a senior U.S. scientist politely told an interviewer on a major European radio station on Tuesday.

    “Well, I am the from the media and I’m going to continue calling it that,” said the journalist – and continued to do so.

  • from BBC
    13 December 2011
    The most coveted prize in particle physics – the Higgs boson – may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.
  • from Nature
    13 December 2011
    The result is not definitive evidence of the long-sought Higgs boson — yet. But it is the closest so far to come out of the US$6.5-billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva in Switzerland.
  • from The New York Times
    13 December 2011
    Physicists will have to keep holding their breath a little while longer.
  • from Physics World
    13 December 2011
    The first solid experimental evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson has been unveiled today by physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva.
  • from Science
    13 December 2011
    Like all good rumors, whispers that the long-sought Higgs boson has been spotted turn out to be half-true.
  • from The Guardian
    12 December
    What is beyond question even now is the huge economic benefit of particle physics. The technologies developed at Cern have already changed our lives. And, while neutrinos and the Higgs boson may seem distant from everyday life right now, I would bet that we will use them to make money and improve our lives in the long run.