Future bright in dark universe: Scientist

With the announcement of having discovered a ‘Higgs Boson like particle’ or the ‘God Particle’ on July 4 last year, the world has fixed its gaze on Particle Physics.

“The future is bright in the dark universe,” said CERN director general Prof Rolf Heuer.
Delivering the Sir C V Raman Memorial lecture at IISc here on Saturday, Heuer said even though, in the last four decades of research, scientists have been able to understand just 5 per cent of the universe, the next few decades will be a revelation.

This is why a tremendous amount of research is going into dark matter, which constitutes about 70 per cent of the universe. With scientists across the globe working in the area, the understanding of the universe is bound to change. The Higgs Boson is just a beginning, he added.

On the ‘God Particle’, scientists now have to look into whether it is a one of its kind particle or whether it is among a group of similar particles. “At the time of announcements, there were basic statistics and further research is needed in this direction,” Heuer said.

The Large Hadron Collider, where the programme is being conducted, was turned off Thursday for maintenance. It will be restarted in 2015 and the programme will go on till 2030.