WHOA: Have Scientists Found Two Higgs Bosons?

By Michael Moyer

A month ago scientists at the Large Hadron Collider released the latest Higgs boson results. And although the data held few obvious surprises, most intriguing were the results that scientists didn’t share.

The original Higgs data from back in July had shown that the Higgs seemed to be decaying into two photons more often than it should—an enticing though faint hint of something new, some sort of physics beyond our understanding. In November, scientists at the Atlas and LHC experiments updated everything except the two-photon data. This week we learned why.

Yesterday researchers at the Atlas experiment finally updated the two-photon results. What they seem to have found is bizarre—so bizarre, in fact, that physicists assume something must be wrong with it. Instead of one clean peak in the data, they have found two. There seems to be a Higgs boson with a mass of 123.5 GeV (gigaelectron volts, the measuring unit that particle physicists most often use for mass), and another Higgs boson at 126.6 GeV—a statistically significant difference of nearly 3 GeV. Apparently, the Atlas scientists have spent the past month trying to figure out if they could be making a mistake in the data analysis, to little avail. Might there be two Higgs bosons?

Although certain extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics postulate the existence of multiple Higgs bosons, none of them would predict that two Higgs particles would have such similar masses. They also don’t predict why one should preferentially decay into two Z particles (the 123.5 GeV bump comes from decays of the Higgs into Zs), while the other would decay into photons.

The particle physicist Adam Falkowski (under the nom de plume Jester) writes that the results “most likely signal a systematic problem rather than some interesting physics.” (By “systematic problem” he means something like a poorly-calibrated detector.) The physicist Tommaso Dorigo bets that it’s a statistical fluke that will go away with more data. Indeed, he’s willing to bet $100 on it with up to five people, in case you’re the kind of person who likes to wager on the results of particle physics experiments with particle physicists. The Atlas physicists are well aware of both of these possibilities, of course, and have spent the past month trying to shake the data out to see if they can fix it. Still, the anomaly remains.

But let’s not let this intriguing blip distract us from the original scent of new physics. Back when the preliminary data seemed to show that the Higgs was decaying into two photons more often than it should, I wrote that it could be “a statistical blip that would wash away in the coming flood of data.” But more data has now arrived, and the blip hasn’t gone anywhere. The Higgs boson continues to appear to be decaying into two photons nearly twice as often as it should.

All the more reason to stay tuned for the next big data release, currently scheduled for March.

The latest results from the Atlas experiment indicate that there may be two different Higgs bosons—one that weighs 123.5 GeV (in blue) and another that's 126.6 GeV (in red).

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Scientists express disappointment through annual hybrid scorecard

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

The fuel crisis, coupled with the environmental impact of vehicles, has brought on a new age of energy efficient cars. To help foster this massive overhaul of the automotive industry, an independent, non-profit group of citizens and scientists began the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

One of the functions of this group is to rate hybrid cars for efficiency, cost, and greenhouse emissions. This month, the UCS released their second annual hybrid scorecard.

What does the scorecard include?

The UCS Hybrid Scorecard rates cars with regard to four factors. First, the UCS establishes the combined miles per gallon (MPG), or the average of highway and city. This number is estimated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The second piece establishes the environmental improvement score, on a scale of one to 10, which compares the emissions of the hybrid to the conventional fuel counterpart of each model.

The third category, titled Hybrid Value, assesses the cost-effectiveness of each model.

The final category investigates the forced features, or the premium features that come standard with each given hybrid. To get the ranking, the UCS then compares these standard features with those of the model's conventional fuel counterpart.

How automakers fared this year

The 2011 Hybrid Scorecard showed energy efficient cars have not made the impact the group has hoped for. While 34 cars were reviewed, only 13 lowered the emissions compared with the standard models by 25 percent, the news source reports.

Notable successes were the Toyota Prius, which ranked first in the non-luxury category for the second year in a row, and the Honda Civic Hybrid at second in the category. The UCS noted how the Prius has a combined mpg of 50, while the vehicle tacked on an environmental improvement score of 9.2 out of 10.

The UCS explained how automakers negotiated the actual efficiency of vehicles through a strong focus on performance, such as speed and visual appeal, the news source reports. The group also explained they felt automakers were shooting themselves in the feet by tacking on unneeded standard features that made the base price of energy efficient cars too high for consumers to pay.

Overall, the UCS was disappointed in the improvements and felt on the whole, automakers did not live up to expectations and promises made with regard to lowering emissions and abilities to save fuel, the news source reports. While green technology progresses, automakers will need to meet environmentalists halfway between cost and eco-friendly characteristics.

The UCS recommends using their scorecard as a guide for finding the best deal with hybrid cars. The organization notes the hybrid label does not always mean a more efficient or more eco-friendly automobile.

Consider using the UCS Hybrid Scorecard in conjunction with the EPA and the given car dealer, to ensure the choices you make as a consumer are the wisest. 

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