CERN Researchers May Have Found Higgs Boson – “God Particle”

Physics researchers at CERN, Europe’s Nuclear Research Organization, and at the Large Hadron Particle Collider (LHC) near Geneva, recently announced that they may be very close to finding the elusive Higgs Boson particle – referred to as the “God” particle. The quantum particle earned its name because finding it helps to complete the ultimate puzzle in quantum physics, allowing researchers to better understand the universe and in effect “read the mind of God.”

The findings by two separate teams were presented at the International Europhysics Conference on High-Energy Physics in Grenoble, France. The teams have identified two odd data spikes in their results from smashing sub-atomic particles together. The spikes could point to the confirmation of the Higgs boson particle.

The Higgs boson particle is believed by physicists to be what gives all other sub-atomic particles their respective mass. The only way to observe these particles is by accelerating them to near light speeds and then collide them. At this enormous speed, the particles give off so much energy in the collision that they reveal quantum particles and characteristics which can only exist at extremely high temperatures and energy levels.

Essentially, the particle accelerators give researchers a glimpse into the very early fractions of a second after the birth of the universe. After the first seconds after the big bang, the universe began to cool and these tiny quantum particles merged into larger atomic particles like hydrogen.

The spike in the data points to a particle with a mass between 114 to 185 times the mass of a proton (which makes up most of the mass of any atom). The team cautions that the spikes in the data could also just be glitches of flawed computer modeling. More work remains to confirm the findings.

Researchers are excited either way. As one researcher pointed out, if the discovery does not prove to be the Higgs Boson, it could mean that the current model of quantum physics is incomplete.