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DeviantlyD -> Scientists May Have Found "God Particle" (7/4/2012 2:11:51 AM)
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http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/04/scientists-say-existence-of-higgs-boson-near-certain/?hpt=hp_t1
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR17.12E.html
This both scares me and appeals to my inner geek all at the same time! :D
Edited to add:
I liked this explanation I found on the National Geographic web site.
quote:
Higgs Holds It All Together?
The Higgs boson is one of the final puzzle pieces required for a complete understanding of the standard model of physics—the so-far successful theory that explains how fundamental particles interact with the elementary forces of nature.
The so-called God particle was proposed in the 1960s by physicist Peter Higgs to explain why some particles, such as quarks—building blocks of protons, among other things—and electrons have mass while others, such as the light-carrying photon particle, do not.
Higgs's idea was that the universe is bathed in an invisible field similar to a magnetic field. Every particle feels this field—now known as the Higgs field—but to varying degrees.
If a particle can move through this field with little or no interaction, there will be no drag, and that particle will have little or no mass. Alternatively, if a particle interacts significantly with the Higgs field, it will have a higher mass.
The idea of the Higgs field requires the acceptance of a related particle: the Higgs boson.
According to the standard model, if the Higgs field didn't exist, the universe would be a very different place, said SLAC's Peskin, who isn't involved in the LHC experiments.
"It would be very difficult to form atoms," Peskin said. "So our orderly world, where matter is made of atoms, and electrons form chemical bonds—we wouldn't have that if we did not have the Higgs field."
In other words: no galaxies, no stars, no planets, no life on Earth.
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