artist's rendition of boson yellow ellipses around center starburst

June Nerd Nite on the Rocks

Steven Dorsher

Several weeks ago, the W Boson made the news when CERN, a world-famous particle physics laboratory, replicated an experiment at Fermi Lab, but with better data. The results showed that the W Boson’s mass was much different than theoretically expected. Steven will explain in greater detail what the W Boson is, the significance of the finding in the context of the field, the relationship to the Higgs Boson, and the more speculative and exciting implications of the result for other areas of physics such as supersymmetry or dark matter.