Big news on the not so home-front in the realm of science; specifically, particle physics. Particle physicists at CERN, the largest hadron collider in the world, may have discovered a new particle. This may be the second massive discovery from CERN since the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle in July of 2012.
To put things into perspective, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is located on the Franco-Swiss border. Its facility is massive, below the surface of this CERN facility lies a massive 17-mile long pipeline which is where the particles travel. This facility is so powerful, it can accelerate particles to .9999999 percent the speed of light. The function of this facility was to study particle physics by re-creating the moments after the Big Bang. By speeding up the particles and then forcing them to collide, scientists can run multiple tests throughout this 17-mile long facility to capture pictures and data crucial for their studies. When the discovery of the Higgs Particle occurred, they ran the same experiment multiple times, looking for a lingering GeV in each collision. The GeV is short for "Gigaelectronvolt," which is a unit of energy equivalent to one billion electron volts.
Whenever particle physicists are looking for significant data, they aim for a sigma of 5.0, a sigma of 5.0 basically means that the new data is occurring enough times for it to be considered significant and not a random fluctuation, which does happen often. To put into perspective, the Higgs Boson particle, when officially discovered, had a sigma of 4.9. Speaking of the Higgs Boson particle, when it was discovered it left particle physicists with more questions than answers. Under the Standard Model of particles, there are theories which are derived from them. The Standard Model is a theory categorizing all of the known subatomic particles; particles such as electrons, protons, and neutrons are a part of this model. The two major theories that branch off from this model in particle physics include the multiverse and the super-symmetry theories.
Super-symmetry is a theory which states that for every particle, there is a "super-partner" particle. This super particle or "Sparticle" would act as a symmetrical partner to an already existing particle. For example; super symmetry would propose that an electron would have a big brother called a "Selectron." (Basically, just add an "S" in front of each particle, and that is its super symmetrical partner.) This is good for particle physicists because it saves their jobs.
See, the opposition to the proposed super-symmetry is the multiverse. This is bad news for particle physicists because it means the end of their career. In the proposed multiverse the finding of the Higgs Boson particle would mean the end of the particles in the universe. It basically contradicts super-symmetry because the idea suggests that after the Higgs there is merely different universes that operate slightly different from one another in the realm of physics, ultimately, this suggests that the laws of physics are random throughout the multiverse.
In both proposed theories, there was a specific GeV that the Higgs Boson needed to reach in order to prove either theory. For super-symmetry the GeV of the Higgs needed to be 115. For the multiverse the GeV had to be 140. When the Higgs Boson Perticle was discovered with a 4.9 sigma, the GeV was at 125. This ultimately favors super-symmetry slightly however it does not prove or disprove either proposed idea. However, this possible new particle discovery may change that.
A new particle may have been discovered at CERN with a GeV of around 750. This is a massive GeV, the largest of all the known particles. This could possibly be a new particle, however at the moment, the sigma is around 1.6, making the data not significant enough to say for sure. If the sigma is raised near 5.0 then the whole idea of a multiverse could be disproven at the subatomic level.
