Large Hadron Collider results excite scientists

By PAUL RINCON, SCIENCE REPORTER - BBC NEWS SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
Added: Saturday, 23 July 2011 at 12:41 PM

The Atlas experiment is one of two multi-purpose experiments at the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has picked up tantalising fluctuations which might - or might not - be hints of the sought-after Higgs boson particle.

But scientists stress caution over these "excess events", because similar wrinkles have been detected before only to disappear after further analysis.

Either way, if the sub-atomic particle exists it is running out of places to hide, says the head of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), which runs the LHC.

He told BBC News the collider had now ruled out more of the "mass range" where the Higgs might be.

The new results are based on analyses of one inverse femtobarn of data, gathered as the vast machine smashes beams of protons together at close to light-speed.

Scientists from two different experiments (Atlas and CMS) based at the LHC are scouring the wreckage of these collisions.

One of their primary goals is to search for hints of the Higgs, which is the last missing piece in the Standard Model - the most widely accepted theory of particle physics.

Without the Higgs, physicists cannot explain why particles have mass. But despite the best efforts of scientists working on both sides of the Atlantic to detect it experimentally, the boson remains a theoretical sub-atomic particle.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director-general of Cern, said the amount of data gathered was a factor of 20 greater than had been amassed at the same time last year.

"With one inverse femtobarn, you cannot cover the entire mass region which is allowed for the Higgs boson," Professor Heuer told me.

"However, the experiments can now - unfortunately - exclude quite a large part of this allowed mass region."

Physicists think the Higgs will most probably be found in the low-mass region - between 114 GeV (gigaelectronvolts) and 140 GeV. While the gigaelectronvolt is a unit of energy, in particle physics, mass and energy can be interchanged because of Einstein's equivalence idea (E=MC2).

Professor Heuer said that searches at low masses had picked up small fluctuations "here and there", but that this was expected because physicists were analysing small numbers across a number of different "channels".

"The whole thing becomes more interesting the more data we collect," he explained.

News of the surplus of interesting events - seen by both the Atlas and CMS teams - were outlined at the European Physical Society's HEP 2011 conference here in Grenoble, France.

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Highest-quality image: Most Distant Galaxy Candidates in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

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Hubble Ultra Deep Field; J033238-275653

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ABOUT THIS IMAGE:
Like a photographer clicking random snapshots of a crowd of people, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken a view of an eclectic mix of galaxies. In taking this picture, Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys was not looking at any particular target. The camera was taking a picture of a typical patch of sky, while Hubble's infrared camera was viewing a target in an adjacent galaxy-rich region.

The jumble of galaxies in this image, taken in September 2003, includes a yellow spiral whose arms have been stretched by a possible collision [lower right]; a young, blue galaxy [top] bursting with star birth; and several smaller, red galaxies.

But the most peculiar-looking galaxy of the bunch – the dramatic blue arc in the center of the photo — is actually an optical illusion. The blue arc is an image of a distant galaxy that has been smeared into the odd shape by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. This "funhouse- mirror effect" occurs when light from a distant object is bent and stretched by the mass of an intervening object. In this case the gravitational lens, or intervening object, is a red elliptical galaxy nearly 6 billion light-years from Earth. The red color suggests that the galaxy contains older, cooler stars.

The distant object whose image is smeared into the long blue arc is about 10 billion light-years away. This ancient galaxy existed just a few billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was about a quarter of its present age. The blue color indicates that the galaxy contains hot, young stars.

Gravitational lenses can be seen throughout the sky because the cosmos is crowded with galaxies. Light from distant galaxies, therefore, cannot always travel through space without another galaxy getting in the way. It is like walking through a crowded airport. In space, a faraway galaxy's light will travel through a galaxy that is in the way. But if the galaxy is massive enough, its gravity will bend and distort the light.

Long arcs, such as the one in this image, are commonly seen in large clusters of galaxies because of their huge concentrations of mass. But they are not as common in isolated galaxies such as this one. For the gravitational lens to occur, the galaxies must be almost perfectly aligned with each other.

Gravitational lenses yield important information about galaxies. They are a unique and extremely useful way of directly determining the amount of mass, including dark matter, in a galaxy. Galaxies are not just made up of stars, gas, and dust. An invisible form of matter, called dark matter, makes up most of a galaxy's mass. A study of this newly discovered system, dubbed J033238-275653, was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. This study, together with similar observations, may allow astronomers to make the first direct measurements of the masses of bright, nearby galaxies.

Object Name: J033238-275653

Image Type: Astronomical

Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Blakeslee and H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University)

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Launching Sunday: Russian Rocket Carrying New Space Station Crew

A trio of spaceflyers is slated to launch to the International Space Station this weekend, in what will be the first manned flight of the Russian-built Soyuz rocket since a failure in August temporarily grounded the fleet.

NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin are scheduled to lift off from the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday (Nov. 13) at 11:14 p.m. EST (0415 GMT Nov. 14).

This will be the first manned mission to the International Space Station since Aug. 24, when a Soyuz rocket carrying a robotic cargo ship suffered a malfunction minutes after launch. Both the rocket and the Progress 44 cargo freighter were lost in what was a rare mishap for the typically dependable fleet of boosters.

Separate investigations by Russia's Federal Space Agency, and an independent NASA panel, traced the problem to a gas generator malfunction in the rocket's third stage. The Soyuz rocket, along with the Progress 44 spacecraft and its 2.9 tons of supplies onboard crashed in Siberia shortly after launch, Roscosmos officials said.

On Oct. 30, in what was the first supply run to the orbiting complex since the August crash, an unmanned Progress 45 cargo ship successfully launched to the station carrying nearly three tons of supplies for the orbiting outpost. [50 Great Russian Rocket Launch Photos]

New station residents

Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin are expected to arrive at the space station on Wednesday (Nov. 16) at 12:33 a.m. EST (0530 GMT), and dock their Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft to the Russian Poisk module. The three spaceflyers will join the rest of the station's Expedition 29 crew: commander Mike Fossum of NASA, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov.

Just five days later, Expedition 29 will end when Fossum, Furukawa and Volkov return home at the completion of their nearly six-month mission at the massive orbiting complex. The trio is scheduled to undock from the Russian Rassvet module on Nov. 21 and will land on the steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia that evening.

The station's Expedition 30 will officially begin when the Soyuz capsule carrying Fossum, Furukawa and Volkov undocks from the space station. Burbank will then take over as commander of the outpost for the duration of his stay.

"I think the primary goals for our Expedition 29/30, in contrast to maybe some of the preceding ones, are the space station assembly is now complete, the bulk of the assembly is complete, so we’re essentially transitioning from a period of assembly being the primary objective and, and the primary operational constraint, to utilization now," Burbank said in a preflight interview. "So the idea is to, is to let the space station do what it was intended and what it was built to do and that is to do cutting edge research."

Working in orbit

The station crewmembers will be heavily involved in scientific research, and are expected to collect data for a wide range of studies, including biology, physics and physiology. 

"The majority of the experiments that are carried out in the medical/biological field are geared to study the behavior of a human body in space, in microgravity, in closed quarters, in some situation when your body is exposed to radiation, and we are basically a part of this experiment, and the scientists are observing not only the changes in our bodies but also they try to predict how you personally will be able to overcome various difficulties linked to spaceflight, and to develop new equipment, new suits, new medicine, new food that will allow us to move through space easier," Shkaplerov said in a preflight interview.

The Expedition 30 crew could also be present for the test flights of robotic commercial vehicles to the space station, including SpaceX's Dragon capsule and Orbital Sciences' Cygnus freighter, which are tentatively scheduled to occur in the new year.

Following the retirement of NASA's space shuttle program, commercial vehicles are expected to take on the role of ferrying supplies to and from the space station. Orbital Sciences already has a $1.9 billion contract to make eight flights using the company's Cygnus capsule and Taurus 2 rocket, both of which are under development.

SpaceX currently holds a $1.6 billion NASA contract to make 12 supply flights to the station. In December 2010, the company made its first orbital test flight with the Dragon capsule, which launched atop the company's Falcon 9 rocket.

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