The discovery of a new particle at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which in all likelihood is the Higgs boson — the particle desperately sought after by physicists for decades — may not change our lives but it is important for our understanding of the sub-atomic world that determines the universe at large. The Higgs is the crucial missing link in a theory of the known fundamental particles and forces of nature (save gravity) called the Standard Model. While the theory gives a unified description of the disparate forces of nature, the underlying mathematics requires all particles to be massless, which is certainly not the universe we live in. In the early 1960s, Peter Higgs, among others, hypothesised the existence of an energy-field and an associated particle — the Higgs field and the Higgs boson respectively — which enabled the particles to acquire mass without destroying the unification of forces in a single mathematical framework. The theory has withstood all high precision tests that have been done to verify its correctness but the Higgs particle itself has eluded detection since the 1990s when high-energy accelerators began their focused search for it. The Large Electron-Positron collider at CERN had ruled out the existence of Higgs below a mass of 115 GeV before it shut down in 2000 to make way for the higher energy LHC. The search was picked up by the Tevatron at Fermilab in the U.S. Just two days before CERN’s landmark announcement, Fermilab scientists announced that if the Higgs particle exists, it has a mass between 115 and 135 GeV, a result that provides an independent validation of LHC’s results.
The LHC began its operations in March 2010 and by December 2011, there were already hints of a Higgs-like signal in the data but its statistical significance was low, with a 1-in-750 chance of getting it wrong. The latest data revealing the existence of a 125 GeV mass particle — with just a 3-in-10 million chance of being wrong — marks a high-point in precision experimental high-energy physics. The quality of data that it has produced in such a short period is certainly unprecedented. The extraordinary performance of the accelerator and the detectors, and the high quality data extracted through improved analytical techniques, is due entirely to the pooled-in skill and brains of thousands of scientists from all over the world, including India. True, this is just the beginning of a long journey when other properties of this new particle will be scrutinised to see if it indeed is the Higgs boson that scientists were looking for, or some other beast altogether. If it is the latter, it would raise many more questions and open new avenues for other ideas in our attempt at understanding the universe.
Keywords: CERN, Higgs boson, god particle
The LHC project is based on the assumption that everything in the
universe is made up of matter. This is totally far from the truth.
There are things subtler than matter like mind, intelligence and
consciousness. The project believes that the whole universe came from
the big bang. In that case did life also come from matter? I believe
that the Upanishads have a better explanation of the universe than the
scientists at CERN. Ultimately it is consciousness that contains
everything including time and space. I hope that scientists realize
this truth one day.
God created man so that man could search and find Him.Have we found you
in LHC,oh my omnipresent GOD?
Much of this cannot be comprehended by lay readers. However when it is said that
the research had an initial hand of a scientist from India, Professor Satyendra Nath
Bose, it makes an Indian proud and scientists in India should draw inspiration to do
their best.
Isavasyam idam sarvam, says the Upanisad. As awe-inspiring as the macro-world of star-systems and galactic clouds is, it is even more mind-boggling at the ultra-micro level! Matter/mass is at the heart of science, whereas consciousness/energy is so per Vedanta. Whether it is this research on boson or any other, it is wonderful to see the human mind methodically work out all these 'understandings,' including the postulated string-theory. More power to fundamental science! Those of us who pursued science in our younger decades with zeal, and do so now equally on spirituality, slowly yet surely understand that teaching of Vedanta, as Svetaketu is taught. Om.
Yeah ...”In the early 1960s, Peter Higgs, among others, hypothesised the existence of an energy-field and an associated particle — the Higgs field and the Higgs boson respectively”. Imagination is the key to innovation. Thus the Russian teacher Medeleev imagined and hypothesiszed about his eka-Silicon and eka-Boron long before there were places for the "new" elements like Aluminum ( Al) and Germanium in the later versions of his Perodic Table. Keule exhorted the scientists to DREAM when he unravelled the chemical stucture of the benzene molecule. That scentific curiosity and creative imagination are the quintissence of scientific discoverires, were proved by Alexander Fleming's invention of Penicillin. Let us NOT berate another poor Ramanujam, who sat by his window sometimes, not wool-gathering but dreaming mathematics, and was, thereafter, whisked off by Professor Hardy of Cambridge that a genius was rotting in Kumbakonam, India
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