This morning physicists at CERN have finally announced that they have found a new boson with a significance of 5.0 sigma which is required to claim a discovery. Both the CMS and ATLAS detectors agree with the finding of a new boson with a mass of around 125.5 GeV and is consistent with the standard model. However, this is just the beginning, much more data is needed to find out more about its properties.
Due to this new discovery CERN has now decided to delay the LHC’s planned two year shutdown by 3 months. The planned shutdown aims to upgrade the LHC so it can reach 14 TeV.
So the Higgs has finally been found however, there is still no sign of supersymetry, which was tipped to be discovered before the Higgs.
Find out more on CERN’s homepage: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/
Also catch the live press conference here: http://webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/