Second Encore: What's Up with the Higgs-like Boson?

Our Open Seating Policy (https://www.meetup.com/AtlantaScienceTavern/messages/boards/thread/14871501) will be in effect for this meetup.

Venue capacity = 40 / Estimated day-of RSVP turnout = 50%

What's Up with the Higgs Boson?

Marc Merlin, Director
Atlanta Science Tavern

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/5/3/7/2/event_136161362.jpegI'll be updating my presentation to reflect the announcement July 4 of the discovery of a Higgs-like particle by researchers at CERN.

In this talk I will introduce the Standard Model and explain why the Higgs has become a Holy Grail of sorts for physicists from around the world working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN accelerator laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland and discuss the experiments that are underway there to nail down this elusive particle once and for all or, barring that, send everyone back to the drawing boards to figure out a new theory of almost everything.

Once upon a time Marc Merlin dreamed of becoming a particle physicist. Abandoning that hope, he labored for years - not so strenuously - in the vineyards of software development. Now Marc once again finds himself with a career in science, this time as the Director of the Atlanta Science Tavern.

Above right: A candidate event from the CMS detector at the LHC in which a Higgs decays into two high-energy photons (CERN).