Documental Eureka

Sobre el proyecto

Sinopsis
Eureka es una película-documental donde la vida del reconocido neurocientífico Rodolfo Llinás se mezcla con las historias de diversos personajes ficticios para sumergir al espectador en los fascinantes secretos que esconde el cerebro. El largometraje tiene tres historias paralelas que se adentrarán en el aspecto más humano de la ciencia con el añadido de unos efectos especiales que transportarán al espectador a ser testigo de los mayores descubrimientos de como funciona la mente.


Más que una película
Eureka es más que una película. Eureka es el sueño de avanzar en la comprensión del cerebro, no solo por desvelar los secretos que guarda sino también para ayudar a aquellos que padecen y sufren enfermedades relacionadas con el cerebro y el sistema nervioso. Además de ese sueño Eureka también tiene un mensaje importante que transmitir a la socidad y a las nuevas generaciones en particular. El mensaje de que la Ciencia es importante. Todos nosotros creemos en el proyecto de Eureka y creemos que puede ayudar a transformar la sociedad. Para articular esa transformación, NEOÁUREA se compromete a que el 30% de los beneficios que recaude con Eureka en los cines será donado a proyectos educativos, para investigación del cerebro y para asociaciones de afectados por enfermedades psiquíatricas y neurodegenerativas. Sin embargo Eureka necesita patrocinadores para ayudar a que el proyecto se convierta en una realidad. Si te interesa el proyecto de Eureka por favor visita el apartado Patrocinio; existen distintas posibilidades tanto para empresas y personas que deseen convertirse en benefactores de este proyecto.

ORIGINAL: Neoaurea

New results indicate that particle discovered at CERN is a Higgs boson

ORIGINAL: CERN / CMS

Candidate events in the CMS SM Higgs Search. CMS, 13 May 2012, 21.08.
A typical candidate event including two high-energy photons.

HIG-13-002 Event 1: Event recorded with the CMS detector in 2012 at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of 8TeV. The event shows characteristics expected from the decay of the SM Higgs boson to a pair of Z bosons, one of which subsequently decays to a pair of electrons (green lines and green towers) and the other Z decays to a pair of muons (red lines). The event could also be due to known Standard Model background processes. Image 1 of 16. HIG-13-002 Event 1: Event recorded with the CMS detector in 2012 at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The event shows characteristics expected from the decay of the SM Higgs boson to a pair of Z bosons, one of which subsequently decays to a pair of electrons (green lines and green towers) and the other Z decays to a pair of muons (red lines). The event could also be due to known Standard Model background processes. Image: CERN, CMS

Geneva, 14 March 2013. At the Moriond Conference today, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN1’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presented preliminary new results that further elucidate the particle discovered last year. Having analysed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they find that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Finding the answer to this question will take time. 

Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles, and its quantum properties. For example, a Higgs boson is postulated to have no spin, and in the Standard Model its parity – a measure of how its mirror image behaves – should be positive. CMS and ATLAS have compared a number of options for the spin-parity of this particle, and these all prefer no spin and positive parity. This, coupled with the measured interactions of the new particle with other particles, strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson. 

“The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is.” said CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela. 

"The beautiful new results represent a huge effort by many dedicated people. They point to the new particle having the spin-parity of a Higgs boson as in the Standard Model. We are now well started on the measurement programme in the Higgs sector," said ATLAS spokesperson Dave Charlton. 

Image 4 of 16. HIG-13-004 Event 1: Event recorded with the CMS detector in 2012 at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The event shows characteristics expected from the decay of the SM Higgs boson to a pair of τ leptons. Such an event is characterised by the production of two forward-going jets, seen here in opposite endcaps. One of the τs decays to a muon (red lines on the right) and neutrinos, while the other τ decays into a charged hadron and a neutrino

To determine if this is the Standard Model Higgs boson, the collaborations have, for example, to measure precisely the rate at which the boson decays into other particles and compare the results to the predictions. The detection of the boson is a very rare event - it takes around 1 trillion (1012) proton-proton collisions for each observed event. To characterize all of the decay modes will require much more data from the LHC. 

Footnote(s): 

1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its member states are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Cyprus, Israel and Serbia are associate members in the pre-stage to membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have observer status.

Physicists find new particle, but is it the Higgs?

ORIGINAL: Nature

Matthew Chalmers

02 July 2012

LHC data confirm discovery, but not identity, of Higgs-like entity.

The ATLAS detector (above) and its rival CMS have both seen a clear signal of a new, Higgs-like particle. CLAUDIA MARCELLONI/CERN

Physicists in Europe will present evidence of an entirely new particle on Wednesday, Nature has learned. But more data will be needed to officially confirm whether it is indeed the long-awaited Higgs boson — the particle thought to be behind the mass of all the others.

Even as rumours fly in the popular media, physicists have begun quietly cheering at CERN, the European particle-physics lab near Geneva in Switzerland. “Without a doubt, we have a discovery,” says one member of the team working on the ATLAS experiment, who wished to remain anonymous. “It is pure elation!”

For nearly half a century, physicists have predicted the existence of a particle that helps to endow others with mass. Named after theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, the boson is the upshot of a mathematical trick that unites the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces into a single ‘electroweak’ interaction. It is considered the final, crucial piece of the standard model of particle physics.

Physicists working on ATLAS saw hints of a Higgs particle last year (see: 'Detectors home in on Higgs boson' ), but the first solid results from the full 2012 data set arrived last week. The signal was seen in the decay of a Higgs-like particle into two high-energy photons — one of the cleanest ways to glimpse a Higgs among the hundreds of trillions proton–proton collisions recorded in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The data contained “a significant excess" of collision events at a mass of around 125 gigaelectronvolts, the ATLAS researcher told Nature, which is the same value suggested by last year's data. The same signal is present in other Higgs decay channels, too, such as those in which the new Higgs-like particle decays into four leptons.

ATLAS's chief rival, the CMS experiment, also sees significant Higgs evidence in its 2012 data, according to a physicist there, who asked not to be named because both ATLAS and CMS have strict embargoes in place. “In practice you would have to be monstrously sceptical not to be convinced by what we have now,” the source says. "But the final decisions on what to say on Wednesday are still being made."

Weighing in

Physicists have maintained that they will not announce the discovery of the Higgs until the signal surpasses 5 sigma, meaning that it has just a 0.00006% chance of being wrong. The ATLAS and CMS experiments are each seeing signals between 4.5 and 5 sigma, just a whisker away from a solid discovery claim. The results are also consistent with an analysis from the mothballed Tevatron collider, which was presented today at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois.

CERN's head of communications, James Gillies, confirmed that four of the theorists who dreamt up the Higgs mechanism in the 1960s — François Englert, Carl Hagen, Peter Higgs and Gerald Guralnik — will be present at Wednesday's seminar, but he declined to be drawn on what will be announced. "Things are still evolving here," he says. "Until the spokespersons of the ATLAS and CMS collaborations stand up in front of the audience, it's premature to speculate."

Physicists will now turn their attention to understanding the new particle. Crucially, they will want to know whether it behaves like a mass-giving Higgs, and more specifically whether it behaves like the Higgs predicted in the standard model. One important task will be to carefully measure the different ways that the particle is produced and decays inside the LHC detectors. The rates could be altered by the existence of exotic new particles not predicted by the standard model that would interfere with the underlying quantum mechanical behaviour.

“Fine, there is something there — a resonance," says Martinus Veltman, emeritus professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the standard model. “Now we have to find out if it has all the properties that the Higgs is supposed to have.”Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10932