CERN scientists pass Fermi in race to find ‘God particle’

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(FILES) A file photo taken on November 23, 2009 shows the silhouette of a scientist as he walks past a screen at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) control center of the ATLAS detectors during the restart of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva. Physicists said on December 13, 2011 that they had narrowed the search for the elusive sub-atomic Higgs Boson particle that would confirm the way science describes the Universe. Experiments at Europe's giant atom smasher have "reduced the window where scientists think they will find the Higgs boson," also known as the God Particle, said Bruno Mansoulie, a researcher at the CERN. The Higgs boson is the missing link is the so-called Standard Model of physics, which explains how the basic building blocks of all matter fit together. AFP PHOTO / FABRICE COFFRINI (Photo credit should read FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)

Updated: January 17, 2012 11:07AM

Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN announced progress in the hunt for the Higgs boson Tuesday morning, narrowing the possibilities for where the particle might be found and pulling ahead of Fermilab’s Tevatron experiments in the effort to discover the particle.

“As of today what we see is consistent with either background fluctuation or with the presence of the Standard Model Higgs boson,” said Guido Tonelli, spokesman for the CMS experiment at CERN, in slides presented to fellow physicists.

Physicists are calling the findings presented Tuesday “hints” of the Higgs boson, and at the very least they believe they’ve narrowed the field of possible masses at which the particle might be found.

But Fermilab scientists, who have been collaborating on the hunt for the Higgs boson alongside the physicists at CERN, said the lab in Batavia could still claim the fame of finding the Higgs boson, which has been popularly dubbed the “God particle.”

“What’s most important is that the way we are looking for the Higgs and the way the LHC is looking, are really very different. If one accelerator sees it and one does not, it might be even more exciting,” said Dmitri Denisov, physicist and spokesman for the DZero experiment on Fermilab’s Tevatron.

The Higgs boson is the last remaining hypothesized particle in the Standard Model of physics that scientists have been unable to observe. Theoretical physicists believe that some subatomic particles get their mass by interacting with the Higgs boson.

On Tuesday, project managers at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, announced that they had narrowed their search for the particle — it likely has a mass of about 100 times that of a proton — and have ruled out with about 95 percent certainty a wide swath of other possible masses for the particle.

Though Tuesday’s announcement was made by CERN physicists, scientists at Fermilab have also been a part of the search through the lab’s Remote Operations Center, which can conduct experiments on the Large Hadron Collider in the Swiss Alps from Fermilab’s campus in Batavia. Fermilab is the host laboratory for American scientists working on the CMS experiment.

Collisions on Fermilab’s own particle accelerator, the Tevatron, contributed to narrowing the field of masses at which the Higgs boson could be found. The Tevatron was shut down in September because of cost and obsolescence in the face of the Large Hadron Collider.

And regardless of whether European or American teams believe they discover the particle first, they’ll likely try to replicate the results through data collected on both particle accelerators, which means Fermilab teams will still play a role in the discovery of the Higgs boson.

According to Tuesday’s announcement, physicists should be able to definitively conclude whether the Higgs boson exists sometime in 2012.

“The window for the Higgs mass gets smaller and smaller, however, it’s still alive,” said Tonelli.