The Bigg day is here at last. Higgsdependence Day as Aidan Randle-Conde calls it. Around 2 o'clock Central time tonight the folk at the LHC are going to be making an announcement at a seminar at the Cern. As you can see below they are queuing up as I'm writing this.
Wired posted the video below on Wired of Joe Incandela giving as close a confirmation as you might get without claiming that the Higgs boson has been 'discovered'.
From the Wired article...
Incandela stops short of calling the new particle the Higgs in the video, saying the results are preliminary. And a CERN press officer told the Telegraph that the video is merely one of several videos made for different possible outcomes in preparation for their big announcement, scheduled for 12 a.m. PDT tomorrow morning. The video has since been removed from the website.
But the buzz surrounding the announcement, coupled with Fermilab announcing its final Higgs search results from the Tevatron yesterday, the fact that six physicists who theorized about the Higgs particle back in the 1960s – including the particle’s namesake, Peter Higgs – were invited by CERN to attend the announcement, and now the leaked video, strongly suggest that the Higgs discovery is finally about to be unveiled.
You can demonstrate your nerd/night owl credentials tonight! By following the live blog by Aidan Randle-Conde of SMU.
Physicist Aidan Randle-Conde from Southern Methodist University will be
live-blogging the announcement with commentary for those in need of help following the convoluted jargon. He will also be giving a
post-talk wrap-up with physicist Stephen Sekula.
From Aidan's blog at
Quantum Diaries yesterday...
On July 4th CERN will hold a seminar where ATLAS and CMS will present their latest findings on the search for the Higgs boson. There’s a reasonable chance that either or both experiments will see a 5 sigma excess, and this would be enough to claim a “discovery”. One of my US friends at CERN called this day Higgsdependence Day, and all over the USA people will be celebrating with fireworks and barbecues. (Okay, perhaps they will be celebrating something else. My boss tells me he might tar and feather me as the token British member of the group…)
Don't know about you, but I can hardly wait!
If you've got the time here is an description of the Higgs Boson by Dr. Ed Copeland of the University of Nothingham and
Sixty Symbols (one of my favorite sites) It's about 50 minutes.
PS. I'd keep an eye out for science's upcoming diary about the Higgs Boson and the conference.
11:24 PM PT: Live broadcast has started. It is scheduled for 9am Central European Time. Here is the link.
Wed Jul 04, 2012 at 12:03 AM PT: Just started!
Wed Jul 04, 2012 at 12:05 AM PT: Joe Incandela from the CMS experiment and then video above speaking now
Wed Jul 04, 2012 at 12:38 AM PT: 5 sigma -- applause
Wed Jul 04, 2012 at 1:13 AM PT: Switching over to follow science's diary
Thanks