Section of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern,Switzerland



Excerpt from
spacedaily.com
by Brooks Hays

Scientists were quite excited  when researchers last year announced they had observed the Higgs particle in the CERN particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider. Prior to this discovery, the Higgs boson was a subatomic particle whose existence was predicated solely on theory, not direct evidence.
Simulated Large Hadron Collider CMS particle detector data depicting a Higgs boson produced by colliding protons decaying into hadron jets and electrons

Now, a new study casts some doubt on the certainty of that discovery, suggesting the data collected with the LHC may explain a different type of subatomic particle, not the Higgs boson.
“The CERN data is generally taken as evidence that the particle is the Higgs particle,” particle physicist Mads Toudal Frandsen explained in a recent press release. “It is true that the Higgs particle can explain the data but there can be other explanations, we would also get this data from other particles.”

The scope of the Hadron Collider

Frandsen was part of a team of scientists from the University of Southern Denmark who recently called into question the conclusiveness of the LHC data. Their hypothesis was detailed this week in the journal Physical Review D.

Frandsen and his colleagues say the data may explain the Higgs particle, but it also works for a theoretical type of particle known as the techni-higgs.

“A techni-higgs particle is not an elementary particle. Instead, it consists of so-called techni-quarks, which we believe are elementary,” Frandsen explained.

Frandsen and his fellow researcher believe another round of experiments using the CERN LHC accelerator could settle some of the uncertainty. Outfitting CERN with a more powerful accelerator, Frandsen said, would enable scientist to observe techni-quarks directly.