Physicists End Search for Higgs Boson

G E N E V A, Nov. 9, 2000 -- 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.

CERN physicists argued they were tantalizingly close to findingthe Higgs boson. But the laboratory said Wednesday the findingswere “not sufficiently conclusive” to warrant keeping it open.

“It’s tragic that the scientific arguments … took a back seatto financial and scheduling arguments,” Tully said.

Sau Lan Wu, a professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madisonwho has devoted much of the past 20 years to the search for theHiggs boson, said she was “terribly disappointed” by the decisionbut hoped the pioneering work by CERN would receive joint creditwith any success by Fermilab.

CERN’s research board agonized Tuesday over whether possibleglimpses of the Higgs boson were compelling enough to defer theconstruction project. Two of the four LEP detectors recorded whatappeared to be signals of the particle, the scientists said.

But director-general Maiani announced Wednesday theLEP accelerator had “been switched off for the last time.”

CERN’s management decided that the best policy is to proceed“full speed ahead” with the upgrade. Maiani will ask its20-nation governing body next month to confirm that the LEP will bedismantled and will seek more money to speed construction of thenew collider.