1 December

On 18 November, the laying of the foundation stone for the SuperKEKB accelerator took place at the Japanese accelerator laboratory KEK in Tsukuba. This accelerator with the corresponding particle detector Belle II will become a so-called Super-B-factory.

…since Dr. Wilczek had a compelling theoretical argument on his side, he was happy to give her odds of 10 to 1. If the L.H.C. finds the Higgs boson with a mass below 150 GeV, he wins 10 Nobel chocolate coins (the pinnacle of Hanukkah gelt); if not, Dr. Conrad wins 100.

The 21-nation CERN’s ruling Council meets from December 12 to December 16 and any concrete sign of the Higgs – whose existence was postulated four decades ago by British scientist Peter Higgs – would be reported during that session.

When the PAMELA team saw a spike in the ratio of positrons to the more abundant electrons over a particular slice of the energy spectrum, some physicists got excited.