The God Particle

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“ "I never expected this to happen in my lifetime and shall be asking my family to put some champagne in the fridge." -- Peter Higgs, for whom the boson was named following his 1964 academic paper on the topic.

Yesterday, CERN annouced the discovery of a new particle which matched all the features of the the Higgs boson, also known as the "God Particle".

It's a pretty big deal. As in, possibly-the-biggest-discovery-of-our-lifetime big. If you're not familiar with science or WHY this matters, I'm going to try to explain and put several resources below that might help you out.

Ready? Here we go!

A Higgs boson particle is thought to be the particle that gives mass to all other particles in the universe. Something as small and light as a particle should move at the speed of light. But they don't. For some reason, various particles have different masses. This makes them move slower than light-speed -- but nobody has figured out why.

The Higgs boson might provide the answer (if it's not the answer, itself).

Proof of this particle could open up a new understanding of modern physics and subsequently prove the possiblity of things like faster-than-light travel, dimensional/string theory and time travel. It will definitely give us a key insight into the basic laws of the universe, as gravity and mass are both affected by the Higgs boson.

There's a little controvery surrounding this annoucement, though. First, the Higgs boson is VERY hard to track. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been smashing protons together to get a fair amount of data, but the Higgs boson is elusive. When the protons collide at near-light speed, they break apart into the fundemental building blocks of the universe. The Higgs boson is one of these elements, and it VERY quickly decays into other elements, making it hard to get a good reading on whether it's actually there or not.

Data and readings confirm the presence of a Higgs boson at 5-sigma, which in scientific terms means: 99.99994%.

But it's not 100%. Remember, we're dealing with cutting edge physics here. This is the edge of the edge of the knife. Even with that level of confirmation, we're looking for a particle that's never been discovered, in a realm of physics that we've never been able to study. Despite assurances and predictions, we could still be wrong.

It's a hard topic to wrap your head around. The links below will give you some extra insight into what very well could be the greatest discovery of our time.

What is a Higgs Boson? : From The Guardian. Probably the best explaination I've seen so far.

PhD Comics: The Higgs Boson Explained : It's a cartoon. Definitely worth a watch. Explains what CERN is doing and what a particle discovery like this actually means for physics.

What in the World is a Higgs Boson? From the NY Times. Good videos.

Does 5-Simga Mean Discovery? : From Physics Buzz, this article talks about whether or not a 99+% confirmation actually means we found a Higgs Boson.

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