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Evidence of important scientific discovery at CERN
Maltese scientists conducting research at CERN on the control of the beam particles being used in Higgs Boson research.
The Higgs Boson is believed to explain why particles have mass, a mechanism which has eluded physicists.
Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) have revealed strong evidence for the Higgs Boson, a fundamental building block of the foundations of science. A new sub-atomic particle was found and its properties are consistent with the Higgs Boson.
More data is currently being taken to confirm the Higgs' existence. The announcement was made at the International Conference for High Energy Physics in Melbourne Australia.
The Large Hadron Collider is the largest instrument ever built by mankind spanning 27km in length and is found on the Franco-Swiss border close to Geneva. Its price tag hits the €7.5 billion mark.
The duration of the research and development on the machine design, construction and experimental phase runs add up to 28 years. The construction phase of the machine came to an end in 2008 when the machine was started for the first time and the experimental phase has proceeded since.
The Higgs Boson is believed to explain why particles have mass, a mechanism which has eluded physicists since the fundamental "periodic table" of subatomic particles (known as the Standard Model) was confirmed over the past 50 years. The discovery of the Higgs would complete the fundamental foundation of science after several decades of research.
University of Malta scientists Nicholas Sammut (Faculty of ICT), Pierluigi Mollicone (Faculty of Engineering), Gianluca Valentino (PhD Student ICT), Nicholas Aquilina (PhD Student ICT) and Marija Cauchi (PhD Student Engineering) are conducting research at CERN specifically on the control of the beam particles and on the collimation (particle beam cleaning) systems.
The benchmark for a discovery such as the Higgs Boson is a statistical one know as five sigma which reduces the likelihood of a fluctuation to only one-in-3.5 million. The scientists' certainty level has reached this level. Scientists now need to confirm the signature of the Higgs which takes many years of hard work since the LHC generates as much data as everyone in the world doing 10 telephone calls at once.
