Right now, it's simply a "bump."
"In particle physics, a bump is when you have a smooth data curve — which is what you expect — and you see a little excess, a little bump in the middle of it, and that often is indicative that you may have made a discovery of some kind," said scientist Don Lincoln.
Don Lincoln is one of hundreds of scientists at Fermilab in suburban Chicago reviewing the data produced by LHC.
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| A $5.5 billion atom smasher, called the Large Hadron Collider, is housed at the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland. (Maximilien Brice and Claudia Marcelloni/CERN) |
"Since about 1964," Lincoln explained, "we have invented a series of theories that, blended together, is called the Standard Model of Particle Physics and from that we can explain all data that we've taken. However, we can't explain this bump."
Which means this "bump" could represent a new particle previously unknown to scientists.
"If it is real, it's probably the biggest discovery of the last half century," Lincoln said.
Long-distance collaboration
Fermilab, is the home of the Tevatron accelerator, once the largest superconducting supercollider in the world. Though the Tevatron accelerator has been taken offline, and has been eclipsed by CERN's LHC, Fermilab remains at the forefront of particle physics.
"We bring a certain amount of technology, know-how, to their machine because we started with a superconducting machine. So we have viable knowledge to bring to the table," said Fermilab's director, Nigel Lockyer.
Fermilab's director, Nigel Lockyer says particle physics is now a more global exercise.
"We're into a new era of relationship between CERN and Fermilab, or between the United States and Europe, intertwining our particle physics programs," he said.
What helps the interaction are technological advances and global cooperation that allow scientists at Fermilab to remotely monitor and analyze data produced by the LHC's particle collisions some 7,000 kilometers away.
Everything, or nothing
As the particle collisions continue to produce data, Lincoln says the watchful eyes of more than a thousand scientists globally will arrive at one of two explanations for the "bump."
"One is that this is just a random statistical fluctuation and it will disappear with more data, and we need to be very clear about that," he explained. "The far more exciting possibility is that if it is real, yes, absolutely it is a completely fascinating thing that will rewrite our understanding of how the world works."
The LHC starts a six-month run of proton-smashing collisions, scientists help to provide the answers to whether the "bump" as nothing more than a bump in the road to better understanding the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
