CERN's Higgs Boson Discovery Passes Peer Review Publication Hurdle 73
MrSeb writes "CERN's announcement on July 4 — that experiments performed by the Large Hadron Collider had discovered a particle that was consistent with the Higgs boson — has passed a key step towards becoming ratified science: Its findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Physics Letters B, effectively becoming science in the process. Before we actually know what the new particle is, CERN, the LHC, and the CMS and ATLAS teams must perform additional tests. The LHC had been scheduled to shut down for upgrades, but following the July announcement it has instead been smashing protons together nonstop, to produce more data for CMS and ATLAS to analyze. By December, it is hoped that both teams will have a much better idea of the properties of the new particle, and whether it is actually the Higgs boson."
Re:Physics Letters B?? (Score:4, Interesting)
PRL is also used for smaller sort of interim reports. I have a PRL article as an undergrad, might have a high impact factor but I don't think I'm that good (wouldn't have landed a Nature for example). The impact factor might be more a factor of it being shorter articles so something you are moderately interested in you'll read where as you wouldn't dust off a Phys. Rev. B article unless you are interested in the area it focuses on (condensed matter). I'm just speculating but I'd imagine there will be enough spin off articles, and even just "we found God now what?" opinion pieces to land the cover of Nature, Science, etc.
Re:Quick couple of questions (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this particle "consistent" with what we believe to be a Higgs Boson, or is it actually a Higgs Boson?
It's within the expected mass range, but its properties have yet to be determined, making it a Higgs candidate.
Re:Quick couple of questions (Score:4, Interesting)
Consensus has nothing to do with science. Following the scientific method is science.
And the particle the people at CERN have discovered is consistent with what we believe to be a Higgs boson, and might therefore actually be one. We haven't had time to do enough experiments to tell. The only things we know about the particle is that it's there and that it has a mass of ~126 GeV. We're assuming that it's the Higgs, because the Higgs is the only particle that is missing with a mass in that neighbourhood. (Gravitons ought to be heavier, as do dark matter, etc.)