LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Oct. 24, 2012—Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) scientist Michael Graesser describes what we know about the Higgs boson particle at a Frontiers in Science series talk at 7 p.m., Monday, Oct. 29 in the Duane Smith Auditorium at Los Alamos High School.

“A new particle was discovered last summer at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. The Higgs boson gives mass to quarks and the electron but we don’t know yet if this new particle is the Higgs boson,” said Graesser, of the Laboratory’s Theoretical Division. “I will describe what we know about this new particle and speculate about discoveries that might now be on the horizon.”

Graesser repeats his talk on:

• Nov. 2 in the James A. Little Theater of the New Mexico School for the Deaf, 1060 Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe
• Nov. 8 in the Nick Salazar Center for the Arts, Northern New Mexico College, 921 Paseo de Oñate, Española
• Nov. 9 at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, 1801 Mountain Road N.W., Albuquerque.

All the talks begin at 7 p.m. and are free and open to the public.

Graesser performs research in the areas of dark matter and theoretical subatomic physics. He has a doctoral degree in elementary particle theory from the University of California, Berkeley, and had postdoctoral appointments at UC, Santa Cruz, Caltech and Rutgers University before joining Los Alamos. Graesser also did a graduate fellowship at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. He has been published in numerous journals.

Sponsored by the Fellows of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Frontiers in Science lecture series is intended to increase local public awareness of the diversity of science and engineering research at the Laboratory.

For more information, contact Linda Anderman of LANL’s Community Programs Office at (505) 665-9196, 888-841-8256, or anderman@lanl.gov.