Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 2

The main function of the first paragraph is to:

Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 3

Based on the passage, one similarity between the two particle colliders described in lines 18-32 is that:

Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 4

The main idea of the last paragraph is that:

Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 5

According to the passage, scientists in Brussels and London:

Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 6

Based on the passage, to make the particle collider functional, French, Italian, and German firms designed the dipole magnets to be capable of:

Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 7

The passage indicates that physicists could not discover the Higgs boson until:

Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 8

The passage suggests that compared to work at the LHC, work at the Tevatron was:

Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 9

It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that the author includes the description of the scientists' reactions to data gained from the ATLAS and CMS experiments (lines 69-71) primarily to:

Passage IV

Natural Science: This passage is adapted from the essay "The Higgs at Last" by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli, and Sau Lan Wu (c2013 by Scientific American).

The Higgs boson is the cornerstone of the Standard Model, an

interwoven set of theories that constitute modern particle physics.

This particle's existence had been suggested in 1964 by Peter

W. Higgs of the University of Edinburgh as the result of a subtle

5 mechanism--independently conceived by Francois Englert and

Robert Brout in Brussels plus three theorists in London--that

endows elementary particles with mass. The Higgs boson is the

physical manifestation of an ethereal fluid (called the Higgs field)

that permeates every corner of the cosmos and imbues particles

10 with distinctive masses.

Although theorists asserted that the Higgs boson--or

something like it--must exist, they could not predict what its

mass might be. For this and other reasons, researchers had few

clues about where to look for it. An early candidate, weighing

15 in at less than nine times the proton mass, turned up in 1984 at a

refurbished, low-energy electron-positron collider in Hamburg,

Germany. Yet the evidence withered away after further study.

Most theorists agreed that the Higgs mass should be 10 to

100 times higher. If so, discovering it would require a much larger

20 and more energetic particle collider than even the Fermi National

Laboratory's Tevatron, a collider completed in 1983. That same

year CERN began building the billion-dollar Large Electron

Positron (LEP) collider, boring a 27-kilometer circular tunnel

that crossed the French-Swiss border four times near Geneva.

25 Although LEP had other goals, the Higgs boson was high on its

target list. Discoveries and precision measurements made at LEP

and the Tevatron soon implied that the HIggs boson should be

no more than 200 GeV, which put it potentially within reach of

these colliders. (GeV is the standard unit of mass and energy in

30 particle physics, about equal to a proton mass.) In over a decade

of searching, however, physicists found no lasting evidence for

Higgs-like data bumps.

During the final LEP runs in the summer of 2000, physicists

decided to push the collision energy beyond what the machine was

35 designed to handle. That is when hints of a Higgs boson began

appearing. After a heated debate, CERN's then-director Luciano

Maiani decided to shut LEP down and begin its planned conver-

sion into the LHC, a machine designed to find the HIggs boson.

The LHC is the most spectacular collection of advanced

40 technology ever assembled. Built inside the original LEP tun-

nel, it uses little left from that collider. Its principal components

include more than 1,200 superconducting dipole magnets--shiny,

15-meter-long cylinders worth nearly $1 million each. Probably

the most sophisticated components ever mass-produced, by firms

45 in France, Germany and Italy, they harbor twin beam tubes that

are flanked by niobium-titanium magnet coils bathed in liquid

helium at 1.9 kelvins, or-271 degrees Celsius. Inside, twin proton

beams circulate in both directions at energies up to 7 TeV and

velocities approaching light speed.

50 Although the LHC is a giant collider feeding multiple ex-

periments, only the two largest ones--ATLAS and CMS--had

been tasked with finding the Higgs boson. The ATLAS and

CMS experiments couldn't observe a Higgs boson directly--it

would decay into other particles far too quickly. They looked

55 for evidence that it was created inside. Depending on the Higgs

boson's mass, it could decay into lighter particles in a variety of

ways. In 2011, attention began to focus on its rare decays into two

photons and four charged leptons, because these signals would

stand out starkly against tremendous backgrounds of data. By

60 May 2012, the LHC was producing data 15 times faster than the

Tevatron had ever achieved.

On June 15, 2012, CMS physicists began gathering to

hear the preliminary reports. Signals from their data were

occurring again in the same vicinity--near 125 GeV--that had

65 so tantalized researchers six months earlier. Scientists realized

almost immediately that if they were to combine the new data

with the 2011 results, chances were good that CMS could claim

a Higgs discovery. Similar revelations occurred in the ATLAS

experiment. At the thrilling moment of recognition, one ATLAS

70 group of about a dozen physicists erupted in loud clapping and

cries of joy, which echoed down the hallway, CMS and ATLAS

independently concluded that the chances that the apparition was

a fluke, due to random fluctuations, were less than one in three

million. It had to be real.

75 These results were shared at a public joint seminar at CERN

on July 4, 2012. When the camera panned to Dr. Higgs, he could

be seen pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

Few physicists doubt that a heavy new particle has turned up

at CERN, but there is still debate about its exact nature--since

80 July 2012, attention has focused on whether the new particle is

indeed "the" Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. The

particle opens up a fabulous new laboratory for further experi-

mentation. Are its properties exactly as predicted? The apparent

discrepancies in the early data could be random fluctuations that

85 disappear in months to come. Or perhaps they are offering subtle

hints of intriguing new phyusics.

Question 10

As it is used in line 78, the phrase turned up most nearly means: