Quest For Higgs Boson: What Are We All Made Of?
- December 29th, 2011
- Posted by EUEditor
Scientists engaged with the LHC collider in Geneva ended 2011 with a cautious disclosure, that they may have seen signs of the Higgs boson – an hypothetical energy field that would further explain the composition of matter.
The huge experimental device, called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can pound atoms, to reveal more of their structure. (See EUAustralia Online, “The pending end of the Earthâ€, 25.9.08).
The English theoretical physicist, Peter Higgs (picture), now 82, in 1964 posited the existence of an energy field permeating the universe, to explain why different sub-atomic particles had differential mass.
Work with the collider at the CERN laboratories (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) in Geneva has now shown up a signal that fades, and warrants more investigation, in the search for the “Higgs bosonâ€.
“If it’s there, we will find it in 2012â€, said a researcher at an American laboratory closely monitoring data from the experimentation.
This month’s revelation caps a year in which scientific horizons have again been extended, with proposals like, the discovery of a planet that may have characteristics similar to those of Earth, and new grounds for considering the speed of light may be exceeded.
What’s a boson? Try, from WordNet, “any particle that obeys Bose-Einstein statistics but not the Pauli exclusion principle; all nuclei with an even mass number are bosons.â€
See videos, on Higgs boson:
VoA, Washington, “Higgs boson particle video news : Geneva Cern Laboratoryâ€, 17.12.11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1sd4zBsJ90, (29.12.11).
Don Lincoln, “What is a Higgs Boson?â€, Fermilab, Batavia – Ill. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIg1Vh7uPyw&feature=related, (29.12.11).