Do you think it is possible to find God in a Particle?........................................ Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon By Robert Evans Mon Apr 7, 12:27 PM ET GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago. ADVERTISEMENT Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson," which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year. "The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists. The 78-year-old's original efforts in the early 1960s to explain why the force, dubbed the Higgs field, must exist were dismissed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Today, the existence of the invisible field is widely accepted by scientists, who believe it came into being milliseconds after the Big Bang created the universe some 15 billion years ago. Finding the Higgs boson would prove this theory right. CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aims to simulate conditions at the time of that primeval inferno by smashing particles together at near light-speed and so unlock many secrets of the universe. Higgs was in Geneva to visit CERN for the first time in 13 years in advance of the launch. Scientists at the centre hope the process will produce clear signs of the boson, dubbed the "God particle" by some, to the displeasure of Higgs, an atheist. He came up with his theory to explain why mass disappears as matter is broken down to its smallest constituent parts -- molecules, atoms and quarks. BIG BANG The normally media-shy physicist, who has spent most of his career at Scotland's Edinburgh University, postulated that matter was weightless at the exact moment of the Big Bang and then much of it promptly gained mass. This, he argued, must be due to a field which stuck to particles as they passed through it and made them heavy. If this had not happened, matter would have floated free in space and stars and planets would never have formed. Higgs said he hoped the elusive boson -- which an earlier but less powerful collider at CERN and another at the U.S. Fermilab had failed to detect -- would be identified before his 80th birthday in 2009. "If it doesn't," he said, "I shall be very, very puzzled." But there may be no immediate visible proof -- despite some fanciful portrayals of what it might look like -- of the boson's appearance on the ultra-sophisticated computers used by CERN scientists to track the billions of collisions in the LHC. "It all happens so fast that the appearance of the boson may be hidden in the data collected, and it could take a long time for the analysis to find it," said Higgs. "I may have to keep the champagne on ice for a while yet."
The "God Particle" "Big BANG"
by TopHat 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
BurnTheShips
I wish we built some new big colliders here in the States again, we certainly have the room.
*sigh*
Burn
-
BurnTheShips
For those that want to learn a little bit about the Higgs Boson and the new LHC in CERN:
Fascinating:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
Orgasmic hardware. What I wouldn't give to be working on one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
Burn
-
BurnTheShips
With those energy levels, some think we are going to reach a "Let there be Light" moment.
"And it was good"
LOL Burn
-
TopHat
BTS? Aren't they building one in Texas?
-
IP_SEC
This is prolly due to my lack of knowledge on the subject but, I always thought if the Higgs field were proven it would bring backsome what of an Aether Theory. The Higgs field is greater than zero as is the cosmological constant... interesting.
Higgs particles are the only models of the standard QM model not yet observed. So it would be cool... Im not sure why you call it the 'god particle' tho.
-
Spook
I wish we built some new big colliders here in the States again, we certainly have the room.
*sigh*
Burn
I have to agree with Burn here for once. The company I work for has done much work with Fermi Labs and in the not too distant passed we were anticipating their award of a contract for the world's largest particle accelerator. This - alas- did not occur.
-
BurnTheShips
We abandoned the Superconducting SuperCollider.
The pathos!
Burn
-
BurnTheShips
Higgs particles are the only models of the standard QM model not yet observed. So it would be cool... Im not sure why you call it the 'god particle' tho.
Sensationalism. A true impersonal "God particle" would soil Atheist's underpants. But the Higgs Boson is a product of the Big Bang, not a predecessor. It's slick marketing, if it funds the science to build the colliders, I don't care.
Burn
-
Shazard
It's called "God's particle" coz it gives mass to all the ordinary mass we observe when we observe mass. That's why it has such strange name... And Higgs bozon means that there is Higgs field (quantum physics stuff), so bottomline - that is field which "materialises" and makes observable all other particles, and the mass of the particle is proportional to it's interaction with this field. More funny is that higgs bozon itself has mass, it is like "chunk" of bozons clumping in one place thus making mass out of nothing!
Is it God himself... hardly!