Why the Higgs Boson didn't win this year's Nobel

In the days leading up to today's (Oct. 9) announcement of the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics, speculation was rampant that the discovery of the Higgs boson particle would be rewarded this year.

This summer, particle physicists at the world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), announced they'd finally found what looks to be the Higgs boson after decades of searches have turned up nothing. Recently, rumors started flying that the 2012 Nobel would reward either the teams responsible for the discovery, or the scientists who predicted the particle's existence almost 50 years ago.

Today, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that this year's Nobel in physics was awarded to French physicist Serge Haroche and American physicist David Wineland for their pioneering work in quantum optics -- the study of the fundamental interaction between light and matter.

Why no glory for the Higgs?

"It was too early," said Nobel laureate George Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley, who won the 2006 physics prize with John Mather for their work on the cosmic microwave radiation in space left over from the Big Bang. Their findings came from measurements made by NASA's COBE satellite after it launched in 1989.

The Nobel committee has a history of taking its time to reward scientific discoveries. Last year's winners, Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, won the prize for their work in the 1990s revealing that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. And such a delay is typical for Nobels, which aim to honor breakthroughs and scientists whose impact has been borne out over time. [In Photos: Nobel Prize Winners 2012]

Scientists predicted the existence of the Higgs boson in the 1960s to explain why other particles have mass. The particle is thought to be associated with a Higgs field pervading space that bestows mass on particles the way wetness clings to kids who swim through a pool.

This year, two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider had amassed enough data to prove that a new particle had been created with the properties predicted for the Higgs. Yet, physicists can't say for certain yet that the particle is definitively the Higgs boson.

Still, some thought the find might be enough to finally reward the Higgs predictors, including Peter Higgs, the 83-year-old theorist from Scotland's University of Edinburgh who forecast the boson's existence in 1964. Others suggested the teams behind the LHC's recent find should be honored.

Columbia University physicist Peter Woit suggested the Nobel committee break with tradition and award the prize to organizations, rather than individuals, to recognize the teams behind the particle accelerator (run by the CERN physics lab in Switzerland) and its two main experiments, called ATLAS and CMS, that found the particle.

"If there really is nothing but custom to keep them from awarding the Nobel this year to ATLAS, CMS and CERN for the Higgs, I can't see a better occasion to break with the custom, and they've had a long time to decide whether or not to do this," Woit wrote yesterday (Oct. 8) on his blog. "So, here's a (probably wrong...) prediction for tomorrow: ATLAS, CMS and CERN as Nobelists."

Some universities even put out press releases in advance offering journalists access to their Higgs experts in case the Nobel this year went to a Higgs scientist.

Perhaps another year will be enough to show the LHC's particle really is the Higgs.

"The announcement was of a Higgs-like particle and the current LHC run was extended to try and determine more of the Higgs-like particle's properties so that one could begin ascertaining if it really is the long-anticipated Higgs," Smoot told LiveScience. "It probably will turn out to be, but it is too early to be sure."

Furthermore, the summer timing of the LHC announcement simply may have missed the deadline for this year's Nobel prizes.

"The discovery announcement came too late," suggested Frank Wilczek, a co-winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the strong force that holds atomic nuclei together. "Nominations formally close on February 1. There are ways to stretch the rules, but evidently the relevant decision-makers felt that there was not sufficient reason to do so in this case."

Wilczek emphasized that he has no inside information about the Nobel decision process, but said, "I think an award for Higgs particle theory is the odds-on favorite for next year."

Mather, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said he had "no real idea about why the Higgs boson didn't win this year," but that the workings of the Nobel committee will ultimately be revealed. "Wait 50 years for the Nobel archives to be opened up for inspection."

You can follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz or LiveScience @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+.

• Quiz: Test Your Nobel Knowledge
• The 10 Noblest Nobel Prize Winners of All Time
• Gallery: Search for the Higgs Boson

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[HolisticDNA]

Higgs Boson / "God Particle" -2012 Science news is actually a 150+ year old discovery by a different name ..................Infinite Intelligence....Steve Meyer / New Thought Movement / HolisticDNA

The Sixth Sense Activation Sequence - GROUNDBREAKING New Book in 2012!

"New Thought promotes the ideas that "Infinite Intelligence" or "God" is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and "right thinking" has a healing effect..." Wikipedia

Steve Meyer
[e-mail]
www.HolisticDNA.com

[Abed-Peerally]

One of the problems of managing information in the context of the "third scientific culture" where real science and the public interact is the manner information is appreciated by both the public and by scientists. Having myself written scientific matters for the public in "Le Mauricien" I have experienced some problems with some reactions from some people. Here on the Higgs issue we are faced with a particularly intense, sensitive, highly mediatised topic sometimes superfluously referred to as the God Particle and also as the most important scientific event of a century. Actually Heuer said it clearly when he made the announcement of the Higgs finding in July this year. For the public we have found the Higgs not for science. Actually this is absolutely true. For science it is not at all known whether the SM Higgs has been found. It could be a new particle or it could be something that has Higgs like properties, and what that means is not at all clear. Peter Higgs' Higgs Boson must be a particle that exists throughout the cosmos associated with a field and the Boson, a Massive particle, must impart MASS on all other particles, even to those particles much more massive than Higgs Boson. To prove that it gives mass to all of matter in the cosmos will be a very difficult challenge and will raise more questions than will be answered. Such a manner of conferring mass will go against Einstein relativity theory on which I have recently described a new universal law and an equation which integrates the time dilation effects of SR and GR (SAJS, 104: 221-221, 2008).

[Dennis9876543211]

There has been multiple examples of multiple people being awarded the Nobel at the same time. The only valid reason i can think of for not awarding Peter Higgs the Nobel is the sun exploded. Any other reaason is not valid enough.

[CharlesNorrie]

So Peter will have to wait another year. If he dies before next year the Nobel Physics Committee will have to add to list of oppobrium together with that of Roslaind Franklin and Fred Holye.

Abd the literature committee gave theirs to Golding and Galsworthy and not Greene and PG Wodehouse. But great lierature cannot be funny.

Why do we bow to a bunch of Scandanavian academics, not Nobel material themselves, rather than than have a proper system.

and when you realise Kissinger got the Peace Prize you realise the whole charade is an exercise in the blackest of black humour.

The committees conspire too I knew Higgs had not got it when Gurdon (ever heard of him) got the Medicine award in 2012

Who will clean up the Nobel Prize. It's an award of a arms manufacturer, who happened to have a surname confusible with the English word confusible with dignity, and the like.

[ravenbrewer]

Peter Higgs, CERN, and Fermilab.