Searches at the LHC

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva, have discovered a new particle, consistent with the Higgs boson.  

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collides bunches of protons, each containing up to 1011 protons, together.  Physicists are trying to identify whether Higgs bosons are produced in these collisions. It is predicted that one in every hundred million (108) of these collisions will produce a Higgs boson. Physicists search for the distinctive signature of the Higgs boson as it decays into other particles.

There are two experiments at the LHC looking directly for the Higgs boson: ATLAS and CMS.

The latest results from the LHC were announced on 4th July 2011, using the data collected by the LHC in 2011 and the first part of 2012.  Both experiments observe evidence for the production of a new particle, consistent with the Higgs boson with a mass of around 125 GeV.  However more data from the LHC will be analysed to understand it the new particle has all the properties we expect the Higgs boson to have.

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