The God Particle
What is the God particle? ‘God particle’ does not describe some divine entity. It is, in actual fact, a nomenclature given to the object of a scientific quest. The concept of the God particle is certainly not a mechanical attribute of God, and its discovery is not directly related to any religious creed.
The Standard Model of physics is used by the scientists to explain the building blocks of the universe. According to this model the universe began with a Big Bang. This Big Bang Theory is widely accepted within the scientific community. This theory states that 13.7 billion years ago the universe was in the shape of a very dense and compact cosmic ball. Then an explosion occurred in this compact ball, and all its constituents started flying apart with the speed of light. All the particles released from this cosmic ball began drifting apart from each other at the speed of light, which is the maximum speed of any object in the universe.
Everything in the universe is made up of atoms. These atoms are in turn made up of electrons and protons. But, after the explosion of the Big Bang, electrons and protons were speeding away from each other. These particles could bind together to form atoms only if their speed was decreased. And their speed could be decreased only by being given mass. This is why the Higgs Boson is so important. Higgs Boson is a subatomic particle. Physicist say its job is to give mass to the particles that make up atoms. Atoms then combined to form molecules, then molecules combined to form compounds, and these compounds gave rise to all the constituents of the universe as it exists today. If the Higgs Boson were taken away, the particles which make up atoms, would have zipped through the cosmos at the speed of light, unable to join together to form the atoms that make up everything, from planets to people. Then all creation would be unthinkable.
On July 4, 2012, scientists announced a discovery or near discovery, of a subatomic particle about which research has been conducted over the last 50 years, during which period this particle had come to be taken as something mysterious. In 1993, an American scientist, Leon Lederman, wrote a book which, out of irritation, he titled Goddamn Particle, because he had not been able to present a clear concept of this particle in the course of his analysis. (‘Goddamn’ is a word used in slang to curse someone or to express anger or frustration.) But the publisher did not approve of this title, so he changed it from Goddamn Particle to God Particle, and had it printed with this new title. From then on this particle came to be called the God Particle. However, to scientists, this particle is now known as the Higgs Boson.
The word Boson is derived from the name ‘Bose’. SN Bose was an Indian scientist, (d. 1974) who, in 1924, wrote a paper on the behavior of subatomic particles. This paper was greatly liked by Albert Einstein and other scientists. Since then this particle came to be known as the Boson, a name given to it by British scientist Paul Dirac. In 1964, another scientist, from Scotland, Peter Higgs, wrote a highly detailed paper on this subject which was titled, “Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons”.
Since then this much sought after particle has come to be called the Higgs Boson. From the scientific point of view, the Higgs Boson was very important, and became a major subject of research for the scientists of the world. Finally, in 1998, a special tunnel was made for research on this subject by a European Institute called the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
This tunnel was called the Large Hadron Collider. In this project 100 countries were involved and 10,000 scientists and engineers worked on it. The result of this project was announced on July 4, 2012, as ‘a near discovery’.
The Higgs Boson is, in actual fact, the missing particle in the standard model of physics, and explains how the universe came into existence after the initial explosion.
