Data from recent experiments at the United States’ Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, indicate hints to a possible confirmation of the Higgs boson’s existence.

In 1964, British physicist Peter Higgs postulated that mass came from elementary particles, namely from a special kind of boson, or the Higgs boson. This particle was thought to exist shortly after the Big Bang – more specifically, at the time when particles gained mass.

The Higgs is predicted by the Standard Model, a chart that describes how elementary particles and the four universal forces (electromagnetic, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and gravity) behave and interact with one another. If the Higgs boson’s existence were to be confirmed, not only would the mysterious particle complete the Model, but it would also fix any inconsistencies.

In December 2011, particle physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or the European Council for Nuclear Research) noticed unexpected energy fluctuations in the data during their experiment. These fluctuations were thought to have been caused by the Higgs boson decaying. (When particles decay, the emit energy).

There were doubts about the Higgs causing the fluctuations; since then, the LHC, Tevatron, and other particle accelerator laboratories around the have collaborated to search for the Higgs boson, hoping to find correlations of spikes of energy in the graphs.

Last Friday, Tevatron became successful. Its CDF and DZero experiments, working separately, found similar spikes, but the energy was much greater. Previously, particle physicists have hypothesized the Higgs boson to have mass ranging from 115 to 135 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). However, this recent energy excess indicates that the Higgs may have a mass of 147 to 179 GeV instead. Nevertheless, the fluctuations were there, and the LHC and other particle accelerator laboratories have noted them too.

“We are not done yet,” Rob Roser, CDF co-spokesperson and physicist at Fermilab, insists in Fermilab’s press release. “Together with our LHC colleagues, we expect 2012 to be the year we know whether the Higgs exists or not, and assuming it is discovered, we will have first indications that it behaves as predicted by the Standard Model.”

To actually detect the Higgs boson is difficult. The particle decays quick enough for instruments not to catch their being. Furthermore, instead of decaying into only one or two particles, it decays into sets of particles, all of which are different each time. In order to make things a little simpler, Tevatron and the LHC will be using different methods to hunt for the Higgs.

The LHC, which is an underground circular collider, will smash protons together while using maximum mass energy of 14 GeV. Meanwhile, Tevatron, a synchrotron (a type of circular particle accelerator in which a particle beam travels, guided by a magnetic field), will smash protons and antiprotons together at maximum mass energy of 2 GeV and look for sets of bottom quarks – a type of quark – into which the Higgs boson may decay.

According to Fermilab, ultimately “[d]iscovering the Higgs boson relies on observing a statistically significant excess of the particles into which the Higgs decays and those particles must have corresponding kinematic properties that allow for the mass of the Higgs to be reconstructed.” With the two laboratories experimenting simultaneously, yet with dissimilar methods, particle physicists hope to come across more and better evidence.

“One picture may show a child that is blocked from the other’s view by a tree,” explains Gregorio Bernardi, DZero co-spokesperson at the Nuclear Physics Laboratory of the High Energies (LPNHE) in Paris.

“Both pictures may show the child but only one can resolve the child’s features. You need to combine both viewpoints to get a true picture of who is in the park. At this point both pictures are fuzzy and we think maybe they show someone in the park. Eventually the LHC with future data samples will be able to give us a sharp picture of what is there. The Tevatron by further improving its analyses will also sharpen the picture which is emerging today.”

Like the LHC, Tevatron aims to study the fundamental building blocks of the universe and relationship between matter and energy by trying to create the conditions that existed at the time of the Big Bang. Fermilab receives financial support from the United States’ Department of Energy.

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Earlier this week, a group of scientists working at the VU Amsterdam University in the Netherlands conducted an experiment in which they learned how the Moon’s interior is truly structured: below the thin rocky surface (otherwise known as a lithosphere) churns a thick mantle of liquid magma.

The team was led by Mirjam van Parker and Wim van Westrenen and consisted of scientists from the Universities of Paris 6/CNRS, Lyon 1/CNRS, Edinburgh, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. Using copies of 380 kilograms worth of lunar rock samples that were collected by the astronauts from the Apollo missions, the scientists melted them with a high electric current at a temperature of 1,500˚F, then compressed them at a pressure of 4,500 bar. The aforementioned temperature and pressure are thought to be at the same intensity as the ones underneath the Moon’s surface.

After this, the team measured the samples’ density with powerful x-ray beams emitted from a synchrotron, provided by the ESRF. They learned that the molten rock (the magma) was quite dense – much denser than they had assumed – and that it was liquid, filled with titanium.

These results have disproven a commonly referenced hypothesized cross-section that scientists constructed in the past: first is the thin crust, which is not uniform in thickness around the surface; below is a thick, solid mantle; following is a thinner mantle known as the moonquake zone, which is slightly less solid than the upper mantle, so that seismic waves can travel; and, finally, a solid iron-rich core lies in the center.

The Moon lacks current volcanic activity because the magma is too dense, or just a bit too firm; lighter liquid tends to be pushed up more, similar to the magma under the Earth, and there must be a difference in density between the magma and the surrounding solid material for any eruptions.

“Today, the Moon is still cooling down, as are the melts in its interior,” Wim van Westrenen, the chair of the Netherlands Platform for Planetary Science, states in the ESRF’s news release. “In the distant future, the cooler and therefore solidifying melt will change in composition, likely making it less dense than its surroundings.

This lighter magma could make its way again up to the surface forming an active volcano on the Moon – what a sight that would be! – but for the time being, this is just a hypothesis to stimulate more experiments.” He and Mirjam van Parker have published the findings of their experiment in the journal, ‘Nature Geosciences’, on February 19.

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A team of chemistry researchers in the United Kingdom has discovered a molecule that could potentially halt global warming and its effects by cleaning the atmosphere of pollutants and producing clouds.

In the 1950s, German chemist Rudolph Criegee postulated the existence of these molecules, which are known as the Criegee biradicals or Criegee intermediates. Criegee biradicals were confirmed only recently because the means to observe had not been developed until now. They are extremely reactive and elusive: once they form, they immediately bond with other chemicals.

The researchers, from the Universities of Manchester and Bristol and the Sandia National Laboratories, accidentally detected the molecule while performing an experiment with a synchrotron, which used light from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Light Source.

The intense light allowed the researchers to discern the Criegee biradicals’ formation and eliminate those of similarly arranged molecules. Upon detecting them, the team further observed the Criegee biradicals reacting in atmospheric conditions in the synchrotron. They learned that the molecules formed rapidly – faster than imagined – and accelerated in formation when in the presence of pollutants.

“Criegee radicals have been impossible to measure until this work carried out at the Advanced Light Source,” says Dr. Carl Percival, Reader in Atmospheric Chemistry at the University of Manchester and co-author of the team’s paper, in the University of Manchester’s media release. “We have been able to quantify how fast Criegee radicals react for the first time.”

Criegee biradicals oxidize pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide into nitrates and sulfates. These compounds initiate the development of aerosols, tiny particles that deflect solar radiation into space. Aerosol formation ultimately leads to cloud formation, which cools the Earth by blocking sunlight.

These reactions can occur anytime. According to Dr. Percival, “The main source of these Criegee biradicals does not depend on sunlight and so these processes take place throughout the day and night.”

“But the fact is that these [intermediates] haven’t been studied before,” George Marston tells LiveScience.com, “so it’s difficult to know what you would really expect.” Marston, who did not partake in the research, is a chemist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

The Criegee biradicals have not yet been observed in action in the atmosphere, so the idea of the molecules controlling the Earth’s climate remains hypothetical. Initiating the formation of Criegee biradicals and controlling their reactions at such a large scale would be a difficult task for scientists to undertake.

Furthermore, the geoengingeering project may backfire; the atmosphere is still complex and not well understood. ”This is very much the beginning of a much more extensive systematic study,” Marston adds.

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