Fresh Evidence Supports Higgs Boson Discovery 42
An anonymous reader writes Researchers at CERN have discovered the first evidence for the direct decay of the Higgs boson into fermions, a strong indication that the particle found two years ago is the Higgs boson. From the article: "Assistant professor of physics at MIT and leader of the international effort, Markus Klute, said that his team was trying to establish if the particle that was discovered in 2012 was really consistent with the Higgs boson that was found in the Standard Model, and not one of many Higgs bosons, or an a particle that looks like it but has a different origin." Their researchers also found that the bosons also decay to fermions (fermions include all quarks and leptons) in a way that is consistent with the Standard Model Higgs. 'We have now established the main characteristics of this new particle, in its coupling to fermions and to bosons, and its spin-parity structure; all of these things are consistent with the Standard Model,' Klute says." CERN has also announced the LHC restart schedule.
More than one Higgs Boson? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what I don't understand, which is probably because I wasn't a physics major.
I thought the idea behind the Higgs Boson was this one particle that explained away a lot of different things in physics if you inserted it into the equation, but that no one could actually prove existed - and thus the idea was that if it did exist, physics was validated and if not, they'd be going back to the drawing board.
The way I've always heard it talked about, there was only one Higgs boson that either existed or did not exist - anything different wouldn't be considered a Higgs boson, but a different particle altogether since there was a specific definition as to what constituted a Higgs boson.
So, how can there be more than one Higgs boson?
Re:The science is not settled on this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Undergrad so take this with a grain of salt.
They found something that looks like a higgs, smells like a higgs, and even quacks like a higgs while looking in the higgs-pond. They, afaict, have not yet measured its quantum-spin as being zero which would confirm it's indeed a higgs.
If the higgs-like object that was discovered is truly A higgs, it may or may not be THE higgs of the standard model. The newly discovered decay channel of the higgs-like object seems to point toward the standard model and a few other frameworks which others here know in far greater detail than I.
Now they need to measure the spin...