Wayne State University is touting its leading role in helping discover the long-sought Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle", which scientists say could unlock some of the universe's deepest secrets. Michigan State and the University of Michigan were also involved.
The local scientists are part of a worldwide project.
The New York Times reported: Signaling a likely end to one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science, physicists said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a key to understanding why there is diversity and life in the universe.
CNN reported:
"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," said Rolf Heuer, the director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has been carrying out experiments in search of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator.
"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe," Heuer said.
Wow. Sounds like some pretty heady stuff for us non-scientist folks.
In a press release, Wayne State said the following people at the school helped in the research: Paul Karchin, Ph.D. and Robert Harr, Ph.D., both professors in Wayne State University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, along with Mark Mattson, research scientist in Physics, Alfredo Gutierrez, research engineer in Physics and Christopher Clarke, physics graduate student, are members of the CDF experiment.
“This result wrings everything possible out of the data taken over the last ten years,” said Harr. “It's an incredible accomplishment and complements the work being done at the Large Hadron Collider. The low mass range is the most difficult place to search for the Higgs boson."
