Fermilab scientists make discovery in search for "God Particle"
By ERIC SCHELKOPF
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eschelkopf@kcchronicle.com
BATAVIA – Fermilab scientists have made a discovery that brings them a step closer in their search for the elusive "God particle."
Scientists of the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy's Fermilab announced this week that they have observed particle collisions that produce single top quarks.
Previously, top quarks had only been observed when produced by the strong nuclear force. That interaction leads to the production of pairs of top quarks.
The top quark was discovered at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider in 1995. It is the heaviest known elementary particle observed in nature. Quarks are one of the fundamental building blocks of matter in the universe.
"The highly sensitive and successful analysis [of the single top quark production] is an important step in the search for the Higgs," said Dennis Kovar, associate director of the Office of Science for High Energy Physics at the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Higgs boson is better known as the "God particle" because it is believed to give mass to matter that makes up the universe.
Searching for single-top production is elusive. Only one in every 20 billion proton-antiproton collisions produces a single top quark.
To make the single-top discovery, physicists of the CDF and DZero collaborations spent years combing independently through the results of proton-antiproton collisions recorded by their experiences, respectively.
"The techniques developed here are the testing ground for those you would need to find where we think the Higgs exists," said Darien Wood, Fermilab spokesman.
Fermilab is in a race with scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland to find the Higgs boson.
But when that will occur is anybody's guess.
"We don't know the mass of the Higgs," Wood said.
Fermilab operates the Tevatron, currently the world's most powerful operating particle accelerator.
The Large Hadron Collider is temporarily out of commission after being shut down last September following a faulty wiring splice.
