The Tevatron may now be defunct, but it is still detangling the nature of matter from beyond the grave. The late particle-smasher's two main experiments, CDF and DZero, have released the most precise measurement yet of the mass of the W boson, one of the fundamental particles in the standard model of particle physics.
The new measurements, combined with earlier data from other detectors, places the W boson's mass at 80.385 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), plus or minus 0.015 GeV. The measurement puts constraints on the mass of the Higgs boson – the long-sought missing piece that would complete the standard model and explain why all other particles have mass – placing it right where experimentalists want it.
To read more, click here.