Physicists believe they have captured elusive ‘God particle’
Posted July 4, 2012 8:01 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Physicists in Geneva, Switzerland, say they believe they have found the “God particle” — a nickname given to the subatomic particle that gives every other particle in the universe its mass.
It’s real name is Higgs boson and deemed the so-called missing link in the standard model of physics.
“We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics,” Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists.
He said the newly discovered subatomic particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself — an extremely fine distinction.
Two independent teams at CERN said Wednesday they have both “observed” a new subatomic particle — a boson. Heuer called it “most probably a Higgs boson, but we have to find out what kind of Higgs boson it is.”
“It is consistent with a Higgs boson as is needed for the standard model,” Heuer said. “We can only call it a Higgs boson — not the Higgs boson.”
The leaders of the two CERN teams — Joe Incandela, head of CMS with 2,100 scientists, and Fabiola Gianotti, head of ATLAS with 3,000 scientists — each presented in complicated scientific terms what was essentially extremely strong evidence of a new particle.
The hunt for the subatomic particle has taken nearly 50 years. A team of scientists, including some from Canada, including Toronto, were involved in this project.
Researchers spent 18 months smashing protons together in CERN’s atom smasher — the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss-French border — to investigate dark matter, antimatter and the creation of the universe, which many theorize occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.
Incandela said it was too soon to say definitively whether it is the “standard model” Higgs that Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and others predicted in the 1960s — part of a standard model theory of physics involving an energy field where particles interact with a key particle, the Higgs boson.
Asked his opinion, Higgs, who was invited to be in the audience, said he also could not yet say.
But he told the audience that the discovery of something that appears to be so close to what he predicted. “It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime,” he said, calling it a huge achievement for the proton-smashing collider built in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) underground tunnel.
The stunning work elicited standing ovations and frequent applause at a packed auditorium in CERN as Gianotti and Incandela each took their turn.
The phrase “God particle” was coined by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman but is used by laymen, not physicists, as an easier way of explaining how the subatomic universe works and got started.
Incandela said the last undiscovered piece of the standard model could be a variant of the Higgs that was predicted or something else that entirely changes the way scientists think about how matter is formed.
“This boson is a very profound thing we have found. We’re reaching into the fabric of the universe in a way we never have done before. We’ve kind of completed one particle’s story,” he said. “Now, we’re way out on the edge of exploration.”
However, these heavy particles exist for just an instant before they decay into lighter particles.
Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Penns., said it is one of the most important discoveries ever made.
“Some have said it is akin to Newton’s understanding of physics; it’s akin to just about the most basic and the most important understandings of physics there could be. It’s like opening the door to that last closet of ‘hey, how does this all work – what’s it all about?’,” Pitts said.
The results presented Wednesday are labelled preliminary, and based on data collected in 2011 and 2012, with the 2012 data still under analysis. Publication of the analyses is expected around the end of July.
