Higgs Boson Article from LHC Has 5,000 Authors!

Science has reputation of being difficult to comprehend but a publication co-authored by 5,000 people can overwhelm even scientists.

The paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters detailed the Higgs Boson find at CERN and its precise mass. Two groups of scientists from several countries and institutions across the world, with each group representing the two units that operate detectors at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) contributed to the authors list. Editors of the journal said it was challenge to put the list together. The science in the article is described in nine pages with the remaining 24 pages dedicated to author names.

"The biggest problem was merging the author lists from two collaborations with their own slightly different styles. Every author name will also appear in the print version of the Physical Review Letters paper," the journal's editor Robert Garisto said according to Business Standard.

Higgs Boson was discovered in 2013 when two high energy proton beams were collided in the LHC. It is an important particle in the Standard Model of physics as it lends mass to matter.

The LHC restarted functioning this year after a two-year hiatus following its Higgs Boson discovery. Though high-energy proton beams were circulated in the collider, collisions between low-energy beams alone have been allowed so far this year mainly to test the detection systems.