The God Particle
The God Particle
What is the fundamental element of existence? How was the universe created? These are the ultimate questions for scientists to uncover. Centuries of study and billions of dollars have been spent in attempts to understand these basic, yet complex, questions of life. Many theories have been presented, including one in the 1960s by physicist Peter Higgs and a team of scientists. In their search to understand how particles get their mass, they developed a theory that the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that no one has ever even seen, is the key to understanding how the universe works.
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| Large Hadron Collider (IStockPhoto) |
Since that time, scientists have worked to prove the theory, and as a recent article on CNN.com reports (What is the Higgs boson and why is it important? ), they have now found an indication that the Higgs boson particle actually exists. Because this particle is believed to exist everywhere, yet it has never been seen, it eventually got the nickname of the “God particle”.
Their research is being conducted by smashing protons against one another in the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (see photo) in Switzerland. Interestingly, as exciting as it may be to finally uncover the Higgs boson, if they don’t see it, this contradicts decades old approaches to understanding the universe, and our existence may be even more complex than originally thought.