Schools

SBU Physicists Helping Search for Higgs Boson

Faculty members are among hundreds of scientists and graduate students working to prove the particle's existence.

A handful of Stony Brook University faculty members are among hundreds of scientists and graduate students who are part of the search for the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider, the university announced Thursday.

SBU faculty members John Hobbs, professor of physics, Robert L. McCarthy, professor of physics, Michael Rijssenbeek professor of physics, and Dmitri Tsybychev, assistant professor of physics, are part of a large team striving to complete the Standard Model of particle physics by searching for the Higgs boson.

Scientists on Wednesday announced that a new particle had been discovered at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland. Whether it is in fact the Higgs boson – which would explain how particles acquire their mass – is yet to be determined.

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“If the particle announced today at CERN is confirmed to be the Higgs boson, this represents a keystone in our knowledge of the elementary forces and particles that exist in our universe,” Ed Seidel, the National Science Foundation’s assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical Sciences, said in a statement.


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