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Shrinking Higgs brings optimism to US lab

Tevatron gains renewed hope of bagging the particle that endows mass.

Physicists shooting to find the Higgs boson — the particle thought to endow all others with mass — have seen their target move, again. A new measurement of the mass of another subatomic particle, the W boson, has lowered the predicted mass of the Higgs.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on January 9, 2007 05:23 PM |

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I'm a documentary filmmaker and we're finishing three years of shooting on this very topic. We've spent a good hundred hours at Fermilab. Although we haven't met Dr. Lancaster who is quoted in the article, we've spoken with a dozen or so experimental and theoretical physicsts at length about the search for the higgs. I can attest to the fact that they are quite excited by the measurement of the W boson that was released. While they are eager for the discovery to be made anywhere (CERN or Fermilab), there is a certain personal and professional pride and eagerness to "find it here first."

This fascinating search becomes more complicated because of the United States' curious relationship with science, both at the cultural and political level. Fermilab's budget has been slashed, and they are scheduled to shut down the Tevatron in 2009 due to a lack of funds, just as they are making real progress towards finding the Higgs. Brookhaven and other labs across the US have also experienced financial difficulties from recent developments in the Federal budget.

It brings up an interesting question (which we deal with in our film): does it matter if the Higgs is found at CERN while Fermilab shuts down the Tevatron? While we as a people should celebrate a monumentous discovery such as the Higgs boson, should we as a nation be concerned that due to a lack of political will many of the greatest minds in physics will soon be drifting across the atlantic?

I'd love for you to visit the blog I've been writing about this topic at http://theatomsmashers.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Clayton Brown | January 12, 2007 04:46 PM

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