The Minority Report

Damn those guys over at Fermilab are making hay while the LHC is down, huh? First the top quark discovered and now an accurate (within 0.05%) measurement of the W boson mass? Sweet.

While those guys were busy with that, I posted on a blog…puts everything into perspective.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have achieved the world’s most precise measurement of the mass of the W boson by a single experiment. Combined with other measurements, a tighter understanding of the W boson mass will also lead researchers closer to the mass of the elusive Higgs boson particle.Fermilab Putting the Squeeze on Higgs Boson | Universe Today

I posted on that announcement here.

Today’s announcement marks the second major discovery in a week for the international DZero collaboration at Fermilab. Earlier this week, the group announced the production of a single top quark at Fermilab’s Tevatron collider. Fermilab Putting the Squeeze on Higgs Boson | Universe Today

Scientists working on the DZero experiment now have measured the mass of the W boson with a precision of 0.05 percent. The exact mass of the particle measured by DZero is 80.401 +/- 0.044 GeV/c^2. The collaboration presented its result at the annual conference on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories known as Rencontres de Moriond on Sunday.

“This beautiful measurement illustrates the power of the Tevatron as a precision instrument and means that the stress test we have ordered for the Standard Model becomes more stressful and more revealing,” said Fermilab theorist Chris Quigg.Fermilab Putting the Squeeze on Higgs Boson | Universe Today