A universal discovery. An international team. A Minnesota scientist.
Roger Rusack, a University of Minnesota physics professor, is one of dozens of U scientists and students who have helped with a grand experiment that this week announced evidence of a new subatomic particle.
Rusack, a longtime professor in the U's School of Physics and Astronomy, has been a part of the search for the elusive Higgs particle from the experiment's beginning, two decades ago. He helped design, develop and tweak a critical particle detector within the massive, 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. His contribution, the electromagnetic calorimeter, measures the energies of photons.
He described the Higgs particle as "present everywhere," forming a kind of force field that gives all matter in the universe mass. So the idea was that if this field exists, you should be able to see it. Put in enough energy in the collider, scientists thought, and "this particle would pop out," Rusack said.
It did, and this week, the world noticed.
There and back again
He spent two full years at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, still travels there regularly and was in the facility a few weeks ago when he thought, "Boy, we really have it." Yet he was careful to leave the facility with a frown.
"'They said, 'The BBC is outside. Look glum,'" he said, laughing.