Newsweek Originally Posted: August 30, 2018 Higgs boson, the once-theoretical particle that backs up our best scientific model of the universe, has been observed decaying for the first time—and this is excellent news as it means everything we understand about our physical world still holds true. The discovery of Higgs boson in 2013 provided support for the Standard Model of particle physics. It describes three of the four fundamental forces in the universe—the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force—and explains how matter interacts. While incomplete, it is our best understanding of how the universe works. By observing the Higgs boson decaying, scientists have more evidence in support of the Standard Model. Scientists working at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider made [...]

SMU Research Originally Posted: August 28, 2018 Stephen Sekula says observation of the Higgs particle transforming into bottom quarks confirms the 20th-century recipe for mass Scientists conducting physics experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of the Higgs boson transforming, as it decays, into subatomic particles called bottom quarks, an observation that confirms that the “Standard Model” of the universe – the 20th century recipe for everything in the known physical world – is still valid. This new discovery is a big step forward in the quest to understand how the Higgs enables fundamental particles to acquire mass. Many scientists suspect that the Higgs could interact with particles outside the Standard Model, such as dark matter – the unseen matter that does [...]

Science Friday Originally Posted: June 9, 2018 Planets, stars, and physical “stuff” make up a tiny fraction of the universe. Most of the universe’s mass is instead invisible dark matter, which makes itself known not by luminance, but by its gravitational influence on the cosmos. The motions of galaxies and stars require dark matter to be explained. Yet despite decades of searching and millions of dollars spent, physicists still haven’t been able to track down a dark matter particle. In this segment, physicists Jodi Cooley and Flip Tanedo, and Gizmodo science writer Ryan Mandelbaum talk about how experimentalists and theorists are getting creative in the hunt for dark matter—and why a few physicists say it’s time to abandon the chase and rewrite the rules of [...]