Physicists Hunt the Elusive Higgs Boson

G E N E V A, Sept. 15 -- Scientists who think they have come tantalizinglyclose to discovering a long-sought subatomic particle have decidedto press ahead for another month rather than immediatelyleave the field — and a probable Nobel prize — to their mainAmerican rival.

When CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, haltsexperiments on the Large Electron-Positron collider, it will haveto sit and watch for five years as the Fermi National AcceleratorLaboratory in Batavia, Ill., has free rein to discover theso-called Higgs boson.

“It would be one of the greatest landmark achievements ofphysics,” said Chris Tully, a Princeton University professor whohas been working on the search for the Higgs boson at CERN.

A ‘Specialized Craziness’

Scientists at CERN have recorded three subatomic collisionswhere they think they have seen “shadows” of the particle,theorized to be responsible for all mass — or weight — in theuniverse.

CERN decided Thursday to keep the Large Electron-Positronrunning through October, postponing for one month contracts tostart the changeover to the Large Hadron Collider, which will takefive years to bring online.

But it decided against a longer run, even though one extra monthis unlikely to be enough to find the particle.

Being able to claim the “discovery” of the Higgs will be afeather in the cap of the successful laboratory.

“Mass is a very important property of matter, and we havenothing in our current theory that says even a word about it,”said Claude Detraz, one of two research directors at CERN.

“I’m sure history will consider it a major step in theunderstanding of matter,” even if “it sounds like a littlespecialized craziness — ‘Higgs boson, Higgs boson, Higgs boson.’”

A Fundamental Question

Tully said the mass of subatomic particles can make objects hardto break or fragile, determine whether they are a conducting metalor an insulator, even create their color.