Submission + - Higgs boson: You can do it Fermi! (physicsworld.com)
icantbemiyu writes: The only fundamental particle in the Standard Model yet to be discovered, the Higgs – or more precisely its associated field – is supposed to “stick” to other particles and thus give them the property of mass. Many particle physicists have been hoping that the [CERN] LHC’s expected collision energies of 14 TeV will be powerful enough to finally unearth the Higgs, and in doing so wrap up the Standard Model.
However, Taoso’s group, which includes members in the US at Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University in Illinois and the University of California in Irvine, thinks experiments searching for traces of dark matter might get there first. Dark matter is thought to make up more than 80% of the matter in the universe but it does not interact with light (hence being "dark") so its presence has only been inferred from its gravitational effects on normal matter. Although dark matter itself doesn’t interact with light, such an annihilation could generate a photon and another particle, possibly the Higgs. The researchers claim that detecting this Higgs would be a matter of spotting the partner photon with an energy reflecting the Higgs’s mass. If their calculations are correct, gamma-ray telescopes like Fermi might see the first evidence within a year.
However, Taoso’s group, which includes members in the US at Argonne National Laboratory, Northwestern University in Illinois and the University of California in Irvine, thinks experiments searching for traces of dark matter might get there first. Dark matter is thought to make up more than 80% of the matter in the universe but it does not interact with light (hence being "dark") so its presence has only been inferred from its gravitational effects on normal matter. Although dark matter itself doesn’t interact with light, such an annihilation could generate a photon and another particle, possibly the Higgs. The researchers claim that detecting this Higgs would be a matter of spotting the partner photon with an energy reflecting the Higgs’s mass. If their calculations are correct, gamma-ray telescopes like Fermi might see the first evidence within a year.
