[News-releases] Higgs, Englert Share 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics

[Tim Meyer]

News Release | For Immediate Release | October 8, 2013, 3:45 a.m. PDT

HIGGS, ENGLERT SHARE 2013 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS

Canadians Key Part of Historical Nobel Prize to “Godfathers” of the “God
Particle”

(Vancouver, BC) --- The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today awarded the
Nobel Prize in physics to Professor Peter W. Higgs (Univ. of Edinburgh) and
Professor François Englert (Univ. Libre de Bruxelles) to recognize their
work developing the theory of what is now known as the Higgs field, which
gives elementary particles mass.  Canadians have played critical roles in
all stages of the breakthrough discovery Higgs boson particle that validates
the original theoretical framework.  Throngs across Canada are celebrating. 

More than 150 Canadian scientists and students at 10 different institutions
are presently involved in the global ATLAS experiment at CERN.  Canada’s
national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, TRIUMF, has been a
focal point for much of the Canadian involvement that has ranged from
assisting with the construction of the LHC accelerator to building key
elements of the ATLAS detector and hosting one of the ten global Tier-1 Data
Centres that stores and processes the physics for the team of thousands.  

“The observation of a Higgs Boson at about 125 GeV, or 130 times the mass of
the proton, by both the ATLAS and CMS groups is a tremendous achievement,”
said Rob McPherson, spokesperson of the ATLAS Canada collaboration, a
professor of physics at the University of Victoria and Institute of Particle
Physics scientist. “Its existence was predicted in 1964 when theorists
reconciled how massive particles came into being.  It took almost half a
century to confirm the detailed predictions of the theories in a succession
of experiments, and finally to discover the Higgs Boson itself using our
2012 data.”

The Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) mechanism was first proposed in 1964 in two
papers published independently, the first by Belgian physicists Robert Brout
and François Englert, and the second by British physicist Peter Higgs. It
explains how the force responsible for beta decay is much weaker than
electromagnetism, but is better known as the mechanism that endows
fundamental particles with mass. A third paper, published by Americans
Gerald Guralnik and Carl Hagen with their British colleague Tom Kibble
further contributed to the development of the new idea, which now forms an
essential part of the Standard Model of particle physics. As was pointed out
by Higgs, a key prediction of the idea is the existence of a massive boson
of a new type, which was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN
in 2012.

The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the Higgs particle
and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Are its
properties as expected for the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model
of particle physics? Or is it something more exotic? The Standard Model
describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing
in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the
matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the
total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to
understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure.

TRIUMF salutes Peter Higgs and François Englert for their groundbreaking
work recognized by today’s Nobel Prize and congratulates the international
team of tens of thousands of scientists, engineers, students, and many more
from around the world who helped make the discovery. 

For spokespeople at the major Canadian universities involved in the Higgs
discovery, please see the list below:

CANADIAN CONTACTS

U of Alberta: Doug Gingrich, gingrich at ualberta.ca, 780-492-9501
UBC:  Colin Gay, cgay at physics.ubc.ca, 604-822-2753 Carleton U: Gerald Oakham
(& TRIUMF), oakham at physics.carleton.ca, 613-520-7539 McGill U: Brigitte
Vachon (also able to interview in French), vachon at physics.mcgill.ca,
514-398-6478 U of Montreal: Claude Leroy (also able to interview in French),
leroy at lps.uontreal.ca, 514-343-6722 Simon Fraser U: Mike Vetterli (& TRIUMF,
also able to interview in French), vetm at triumf.ca, 778-782-5488
TRIUMF: Isabel Trigger (also able to interview in French),
itrigger at triumf.ca, 604-222-7651 U of Toronto: Robert Orr,
orr at physics.utoronto.ca, 416-978-6029 U of Victoria: Rob McPherson,
rmcphers at triumf.ca, 604-222-7654 York U: Wendy Taylor, taylorw at yorku.ca,
416-736-2100 ext 77758

  --30--


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Timothy I. Meyer, Ph.D.
Head, Strategic Planning & Communications TRIUMF -- Accelerating Science for
Canada | 
    Un accélérateur de la démarche scientifique canadienne
4004 Wesbrook Mall | Vancouver, BC  V6T 2A3 | CANADA
Tel: 604.222.7674
Fax: 604.222.3791
Mobile (w/call fwd): 604.235.1925
E-mail: tmeyer at triumf.ca
WWW: http://www.triumf.ca
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