October 8, 2013

François Englert and Peter Higgs (Photo courtesy CERN. All rights reserved)

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When last year two experiments at CERN, CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) and ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus), announced the preliminary results of their research confirming the existence of the Higgs boson, everybody started expecting Peter Higgs to receive the Nobel Prize for physics. Today came the official announcement of the award to him and François Englert, the other physicist who in the ’60s published an independent work that led to very similar conclusions.

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About two weeks ago, the news came that a consortium led by the Canadian financial company Fairfax Financial had offered $4.7 billion to buy BlackBerry Limited. The smartphone maker only signed a letter of intent that allows the company to deal with other possible buyers and there are rumors of other potential offers. However, the news came of a lawsuit filed by a shareholder that could further complicate the situation.