Hints of the Higgs boson?

An artist's impression of the decay of the Higgs boson (Credit: CERN)

"Tantalising hints" of the Higgs boson (link opens in a new window) have been seen by both the ATLAS and CMS experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The results, reported at a seminar held today (13 December 2011) at CERN (link opens in a new window), are in the same mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery. The main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass in the range 115-130 GeV.

Professor John Womersley, STFC Chief Executive Officer said: "There is still some way to go before the existence of the Higgs boson can be confirmed or not, but excitement is mounting. UK physicists and engineers have played a significant role in securing today's results, and will continue to be at the forefront of exploring the new frontiers of knowledge opened by the results coming from the LHC. This is an incredibly exciting time to be involved in physics!"

Listen to Dr Bruce Kennedy, STFC particle physicist, talking about the latest results from CERN*

STFC is the UK sponsor of particle physics and manages the UK subscription to CERN, enabling UK scientists, engineers and industry to participate in one of the world's largest and most exciting scientific collaborations.

Further details are available on the CERN web site (link opens in a new window).

* - a transcript of this interview is available to download (PDF - 89kB - link opens in a new window).