Something was announced today.
. They have
for what is probably the Higgs boson. This could
our understanding of the universe.
I'm sure you've heard about
, the international scientific organization based in Switzerland, and probably in reference to their most well-known and arguably most important project, the Large Hadron Collider. They have several particle accelerators, but this is the biggest and most powerful one in the world right now. One of the biggest things they are using the LHC for is looking for the Higgs boson, famously nicknamed the God particle.
The Higgs boson is what most scientists believe allows for the Higgs mechanism, which is incredibly complicated, but basically a thing that gives elementary particles mass. Most scientists agree this has been shown to happen, but they aren't sure why. The Higgs boson is the most logical and convenient explanation, and so they are using the collider to test for its existence. I don't normally suggest or condone using
, but in this case, it has a ton of great information, and most of the highly technical scientific pages are managed by highly technical people, and updated frequently. It already has information about this event, and it has tons of information about the Higgs boson and the Higgs mechanism, and a lot of it is in not-so-technical language so as not to overwhelm those of us without advanced degrees in physics.
And so they found a particle that is almost certainly (we are talking like a 99.9% chance) the Higgs boson, but it could be something else. Either way, they have found a particle that no one has ever seen before, and just like when we first found atoms, and later subatomic particles, this is going to be a big, big deal, whatever it turns out to be.
Regardless, this is likely to change how we see the universe in a very fundamental way, and could have a massive impact on future scientific developments, including one of my (as a huge geek) most hoped-for developments, interstellar travel, something I consider crucial to our permanent survival as a species. In truth, this could affect just about every level of physics, and the scientific world is on the edge of its theoretical seat, pun intended.
We should all keep an eye out for future developments, including the likely confirmation of this as the Higgs boson.
