By Alex Pasternack Posted 07.26.2012 at 11:59 am 10 Comments

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The hunt for the Higgs boson, that most elusive particle of physics, the one that gives things mass, came closer to an end on July 4. Experiments at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, revealed evidence of the particle and its energy field. But the LHC didn’t do it alone. The search has been a massive, costly and unprecedented international effort that began thousands of miles away, at another atom smasher beneath the Illinois prairie.

When the Tevatron opened in 1983 at Fermi National Laboratory, outside Chicago, it was the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, designed to smash protons and antiprotons together in order to see what makes up the universe. After its discovery in 1995 of the top quark, the most massive subatomic particle, the Tevatron was the toast of particle physics, and made Fermilab the center of the global high energy physics community. From there, it would begin the search for the Higgs. It was a search that might have continued in Texas, at the Superconducting Supercollider, a massive successor machine, if that project hadn’t been cancelled in 1993. When the LHC came online in Switzerland in 2009, scientists at the Tevatron’s two experiments, CDF and DZero, would join physicists at their European counterpart in the meticulous hunt. At times, it seemed that America’s biggest science experiment might even beat the LHC to the punch.

10 Comments

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Greenmatrix
07/26/12 at 2:26 pm

Lets be realistic. Europe has Won the Higgs Race. On of the most profound discoveries ever. And further research (and even higher energy ranges) will be done at the LHC and for LHC future upgrades for years (and likely decades) to come.

CERN combined annual income by it`s members is over 1 Billion dollars and they won`t be handing that to a facility in China you can be sure of that. And it`s more then enough for major future commitments by CERN.

Secondly the US giant Fiscal Cliff is coming. EU total combined debts might be a whopping 83% of EU GDP. But the US debt is now already at 104% of GDP and rising like a rocket on the 4th of July.

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Robot
07/26/12 at 3:47 pm

"...Pound for pound, no one on the planet packs a punch like USA...", yes obesity is a problem in the USA and our ever increasing skyrocketing indebtedness illustrates that daily, followed by our politicians indecisiveness to work together and respect others suggested solutions for an over all unselfish gain for the American public.Yes, the USA is fat and will eventual kill itself with denial.

Like those poor saps making little money, standing in line to buy lotto tickets, we have a government tossing money at pie-in-the-sky science in hopes of finding a free energy economic solutions.

D13, I do appreciate you opptimisum though!

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doitbetternow
07/26/12 at 4:50 pm

The race to confirm that a Higgs bosun isn't a country vs. country or even continent vs. continent competition. Every major scientific breakthrough ALWAYS builds upon previous discoveries. Somebody will be first to discover the Higgs bosun just as someone will be the first Earthling to leave a footprint on Mars. First isn't everything.
Has anyone else noticed that the statements about the 'possible' discovery of the Higgs Bosun is couched in generalities, not specifics?

There's always time to do it better NOW.

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Raynre
07/26/12 at 11:51 pm

Well, now that we have a particle responsible for mass, it's time to get started on gravity. I was promised hoverboards and flying cars, damnit.

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nighthawkich
07/28/12 at 7:03 pm

The graviton is the spoon........



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