A group of University of Toronto high-
energy physicists, along with their 3,000 ATLAS colleagues, announced they have broken world records in the search for new particles as the first findings from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were presented July 26 in Paris,
France.The first results, following only three months of successful operation of the LHC, have “re-discovered” some of the familiar particles that lie at the heart of the Standard Model of physics. The Standard Model theory has formed the basis of theoretical particle physics for more than 30 years, explaining the particles of matter and the forces that bind them. The first results confirm that the Standard Model is working as expected. This is an essential step before the LHC moves on to new territory, including its ultimate goal of finding the Higgs Boson particle aka the God particle. If found, the Higgs Boson would fully satisfy the Standard Model theory. It would explain why all other known particles exhibit the mass they do and how all existing matter came to be. The scientists are also hoping to uncover the solution to the puzzle of mysterious dark matter that dominates the universe.The ATLAS collaboration, which includes 38 countries, produced many of the first results. ATLAS is a detector at the LHC that searches for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of extraordinarily high-energy protons. The Canadian contingent of ATLAS, and in particular its U of T members, played a key role in these searches by setting, with an exceptionally high degree of sensitivity, new limits on the mass of such new particles.Pierre Savard, a U of T physicist and TRIUMF scientist who is one of the two conveners of the Exotics physics group of the ATLAS collaboration, said of this result: “This is an important milestone for ATLAS and the LHC. It signals that we are now exploring uncharted territory at the high energy frontier".“This means that we can discard a host of theoretical models. Pe ...
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