Physicists End Search for Higgs Boson

G E N E V A, Nov. 9 -- Europe’s top particle physics lab announcedit was shutting down the machine it has been using tofind an elusive subatomic particle believed to be key tounderstanding the makeup of the universe.

The shutdown gives an edge to scientists at a rival lab outsideChicago in the search for the Higgs boson, believed responsible forall mass in the universe.

The head of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics said Wednesdaythe decision came after scientists determined the results so farweren’t sufficient to warrant spending $60 million more to keep theLarge Electron-Proton collider going for another year.

“We could not move much from the status of uncertainty,” saidLuciano Maiani, director-general of the lab, known by its Frenchacronym CERN. “And since the next step is so expensive, we had tostop at this point.”

A Race for the Nobel?

The closure could end CERN’s hopes of discovering the Higgsboson before rival Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, located outsideChicago. Finding the particle is almost certain to bring the NobelPrize in physics.

On Nov. 2, CERN shut off the 11-year-old LEP in preparation forreplacing it with a much more powerful machine over the next fiveyears.

“Fermilab is clearly the next … up to bat,” said ChrisTully, a Princeton University professor who had arguedunsuccessfully for another year of searching in Geneva.

“We wish them the best of luck,” said Lyndon Evans, directorfor the project to build the $1.8 billion Large Hadron Collider toreplace the LEP in the 17-mile circular tunnel under theSwiss-French border.

Still Invisible

The Higgs boson has proven invisible in the more than 30 yearsscientists have been looking for it. It exists for only a tinyfraction of a second, so physicists have been trying to see theparticle while it is disintegrating.

The particle is named for British physicist Peter Higgs, whosetheory holds that the bosons create a field from which subatomicparticles — such as quarks and electrons — pick up mass as theypass through.