JOIN USThe announcement of the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle, which comes closest to the long-sought-after Higgs boson, by scientists in Geneva may turn out be a breakthrough moment in science.
It is considered to be the most significant discovery in many decades and scientists are unanimous in their view that it will take us closer to explaining how the universe works. The excitement is shared even by laymen who have little understanding of the theories propounded in the arcane world of particle physics and cosmology. The confirmation of the existence of the particle that resembles the Higgs boson was independently made by two teams of scientists, and unless the experiments have gone wrong, this seems to be the near final word.
The importance of the Higgs boson, also called the God particle, lies in the fact that it completes the picture of the universe as conceived by the Standard Model which is the currently most accepted theory to explain it. It was conceptualised in 1964 by the Scottish physicist Peter Higgs after whom it is named, though the latter part, ‘boson’ refers to iconic Indian physicist, S N Satyendra Nath Bose, whose contribution to the theory has unfortunately been sidelined. The $10 billion-dollar Large Hadron Collider at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) at Geneva has been the centre of the search for the elusive particle. The Higgs boson is considered to be the element that gives mass to all things in the universe and it is the last of the sub-atomic particles which, along with the basic forces of nature except gravity, form the elements of the standard model. With the missing link discovered now the theory stands complete.
The scientists have gone only as far as to claim that they have found a Higgs boson-like and not the Higgs boson. Though there is a difference between the two, there is no doubt that the discovery, to be further verified by more investigation, has taken them to the heart of the mystery about its existence. The scientists consider it as the beginning of a long search for which they have now got a sub-atomic torch in hand. It can led to shedding of more light on the still unclear hypotheses like the existence of dark matter, which is considered to be holding the world together, dark energy and other ideas about the beginning, working and the future of the universe.