(Image Source: NPR)
BY VICTORIA CRAIG
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A seminar in Geneva has scientists atwitter with excitement. They hope a major announcement will confirm the God Particle - or Higgs Boson - is the real deal, and not just a theory. The Guardian’s Science Weekly has the scoop.
“The European particle physics laboratory CERN...holds a special seminar to discuss the latest results from its proton-smashing experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)...The word is that they have found evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson, the material manifestation of the Higgs field that is theorised to pervade the entire universe and give mass to fundamental particles.”
What exactly would a God Particle discovery mean for the world? Here’s the word from the lead researcher on San Diego’s KGTV.
“The presence of the Higgs Boson can help explain how the universe evolved from the big bang.”
How’s that work? In short-- the Higgs Boson slows other particles and converts their energy to mass. One BBC scientific correspondent puts the potential discovery into historical perspective.
“The discovery of the Higgs Boson would undoubtedly be the biggest scientific breakthrough of the century so far. Arguably, it would be the most important discovery since Crick and Watson worked out the structure of DNA nearly 60 years ago.”
But the National Post advises readers-- don’t jump for joy just yet.
“The only thing that is known for certain...is that there will not be a definitive announcement about the existence of the Higgs Boson...CERN’s director general, said as much in an invitation to the meeting, promising ‘significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the Higgs.’”
Still --one theoretical physicist explains why all hope is not lost if the big announcement isn’t as groundbreaking as some hope. He’s quoted in the Scientific American.
“The LHC...was built to give a completely definitive answer about the Higgs boson. And it’s just a question of time in order to do that. The machine works, the detectors work, we have all the people doing what they need to do. So we will have a definitive answer about the Higgs. It’s just a question of when it will happen.”
CERN is expected to announce the results of its latest research on Tuesday.