How Collaboration and Competition Helped Identify the Higgs Boson
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This is the second in a series of five posts by Pearson Science on one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the year.
1. Higgs Boson Discovery | 2. Collaboration and Competition | 3. Teaching the Higgs Boson | 4. Hands-On Activity: Colliding Particles | 5. Hands-On Activity: What’s in the Box?
How Collaboration and Competition Helped Identify the Higgs Boson
The Higgs boson was observed by two independent teams working at different sites along the 27-kilometer length of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Both teams, once called ATLAS and the other CMS, comprise thousands of particle physicists from hundreds of universities around the world, and both were conducting experiments aimed at detecting the elusive Higgs boson.
You may wonder why an expensive operation such as CERN would have two different teams looking for the same thing. Well, a vital part of the science process, particularly in the field of particle physics, is the confirmation of someone’s conclusions. Both the ATLAS and CMS experiments produced five-sigma results, which means the odds of their observations being insignificant—due to background “noise” in the collider—were far less than one in a million. A single five-sigma result meets the technical definition of a “discovery.” The fact that two five-sigma results were independently reported by different research teams made their conclusions that much more reliable.
Members of the CMS team pose with a life-sized composite image of the detector that was used to discovery the Higgs boson. High-speed particle collisions occur at the center of the detector—the “bullseye” in the photograph.
(Credit: CERN)
Along with collaboration and confirmation, science values competition. Who will be the first physicist to detect the Higgs boson? Which marine biologist will be the first to photograph a giant squid in the deep sea? Who will find a cure for cancer? These are the kinds of challenges that motivate and inspire scientists, who in turn make breakthroughs that bring about new challenges… and on and on science goes.
