SCIENTISTS say they have found a new particle consistent with the long-sought "God particle".
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research or CERN said the discovery was a milestone in the understanding of nature.
Physicists stressed the results presented at a joint conference in Melbourne and Geneva were preliminary.
They were unsure if the particle was the long sought-after Higgs boson, or God particle, or something more "exotic".
"The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe," a CERN statement said.
CERN director general Rolf Heuer said it was a milestone.
"We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature," he said.
"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe."
A spokesman for one of two teams involved in the experiment said the preliminary results were dramatic.
"This is indeed a new particle," CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela said.
"We know it must be a boson and it's the heaviest boson ever found.
"The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."
"This is indeed a new particle," CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela said.
"We know it must be a boson and it's the heaviest boson ever found.
"The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."
CERN said positive identification of the new particle's characteristics would take considerable time and data.
2 comments:
Do you think that it is GOD's particle?
What does God particle mean?
Listen Jijo
What does Higgs boson mean for science is the important question and all other thoughts about naming it as ‘God particle’ is meaningless. If people could admit the discovery of electron, proton, neutron, photon and neutrino they should also admit the discovery of Higgs boson.
The discovery confirms the Standard Model theory is valid. Other particles predicted by this theory have been confirmed, but the missing Higgs boson was a glaring hole. Now that's closed. Other aspects of sub-atomic physics and of the cosmos that are unexplained, like dark matter (which makes up 25% of the matter in the universe but has never been seen), dark energy (which makes up 70% of matter in the universe but also has never been located), antimatter, super symmetry (a theory that for every particle there is a heavier twin), etc. With the Higgs boson found, scientists can look at these aspects with more surety. That is, if not a hyperbole a man could soon identify his super twin in the near future. The most well-known force in the universe — gravitation —is still not fully explained. Such issues are still to be cleared with findings on Higgs boson.
In mainstream media, the Higgs boson is very often referred to as "the God particle", after the title of Leon Lederman's book on the topic. Although the proposed particle is both important and elusive (nature attributed to God), the epithet is strongly disliked by physicists ( and atheists too) , who regard it as misleading exaggeration. It is not used in professional publications. And hence it is highly mistaken to make much protest about the name “god particle”.
K A Solaman
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