Media Releases

Major announcement re: Higgs Boson

December 7, 2011

TORONTO, ON – An inter­na­tion­al team of researchers that has been smash­ing high-ener­gy pro­tons togeth­er inside the Large Hadron Col­lid­er (LHC) to re-cre­ate the con­di­tions at the time of the Big Bang are expect­ed to announce new results on Decem­ber 13 in Gene­va regard­ing their search for the Hig­gs boson par­ti­cle.

The Hig­gs boson is a hypo­thet­i­cal mas­sive ele­men­tary par­ti­cle that is pre­dict­ed to exist by the Stan­dard Mod­el of par­ti­cle physics.  The Stan­dard mod­el has been the basis of par­ti­cle physics for more than 30 years and describes the forces between the par­ti­cles of mat­ter. The Hig­gs boson is the miss­ing ingre­di­ent in the mod­el that has been hypoth­e­sized to explain the exis­tence of mass in the uni­verse.

A group of Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to high-ener­gy physi­cists, along with their 3,000 ATLAS col­leagues from 38 coun­tries, have played a lead­ing role in the hunt for the Hig­gs. The ATLAS detec­tor, a key com­po­nent of which was built at U of T, was designed to search for new par­ti­cles in the high­est mass col­li­sions of high-ener­gy pro­tons in the LHC.

The LHC, the world’s high­est-ener­gy par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor, was launched on March 27, 2010. Locat­ed in Gene­va, the col­lid­er has a cir­cum­fer­ence of 27 kilo­me­tres and is 100 metres under­ground.

The U of T fac­ul­ty mem­bers involved in the project are David Bai­ley, Peter Krieger, Robert Orr, Pierre Savard, Pekka Sin­er­vo, William Trischuk and Richard Teusch­er.  They will be avail­able to brief media on the find­ings at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, McLen­nan Phys­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ries, 60 St. George Street, Room 134 at 12:00 p.m.

WHAT:   U of T Physics team dis­cuss­es Hig­gs boson and lat­est find­ings from Large Hadron Col­lid­er (CERN)

WHERE:  Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, McLen­nan Phys­i­cal Lab­o­ra­to­ries, 60 St. George St., Room 134

WHEN:  Tues­day, Decem­ber 13, 12:00 p.m. (noon)

WEBCAST:  http://mediacast.ic.utoronto.ca/20111213-ArtSci/index.htm


To con­firm atten­dance, please con­tact:

Kim Luke, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions
Fac­ul­ty of Arts & Sci­ence
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
kim.luke@utoronto.ca
416–978-4352