Ever heard of the #Godparticle? Or #HiggsBoson, as it is also known as? Particle physicists have been trying to figure out for decades how the #universe was created, something that many people in other fields have admittedly been curious about for a while, too. - http://clapway.com/2015/09/02/god-particle123/

Ever heard of the God particle? Ever wondered why they call it that? Particle physicists have been trying to figure out for decades how the universe was created, something that many people in other fields have admittedly been curious about for a while, too.

The Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs Boson

In 2008, the Large Hadron Collider was inaugurated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, on the Franco-Swiss border, in a tunnel some 574 feet underground. It boasts a circumference of 17 miles, making it “the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider, the largest, most complex experimental facility ever built, and the largest single machine in the world.”  The purpose of the LHC is to allow particle physicists to test different theories of matter, the most mysterious of which is, of course, how and why matter exists at all.

As early as the 1960s, scientists hypothesized the existence of something called the Higgs boson, named after Peter Higgs on the team of physicists responsible for the idea. The Higgs boson is what scientists have (somewhat controversially) nicknamed “the God particle,” because the theory suggests that this particle is what makes matter, well, matter. It represents a sort of missing puzzle piece in the Standard Model of particle physics that, if proved, might explain a lot of other things about matter, including questions about how gravity acts on particles.

The existence of the Higgs boson basically remained a big question mark until early 2013, when CERN physicists announced the discovery of an extremely “Higgslike” particle, found using the LHC. Extremely Higgslike. It behaves, at least, the way a God particle should behave, and it made the hypothetical model look pretty possible.

But the findings were still preliminary, and CERN has spent the last two and a half years trying to nail down more specifics of the so-called God particle. The Large Hadron Collider works by smashing particles (the smallest units or building blocks of matter, smaller than atoms and theoretically indivisible, like protons or electrons) into atoms at speeds close to the speed of light, thereby breaking the atom apart in a way that allows scientists to better study the fundamental properties of the matter in question. For all the size of the LHC, these experiments are very small, and very fast.

Getting Closer to the Truth About The God Particle

This year, thanks to a $150 million upgrade, CERN was able to increase the collision speed in the LHC by 5 meters per second, which may not sound like much. But when you’re increasing from 299,792,449 meters per second to 299,792,454 meters per second, it makes quite the difference, especially because the Higgs boson particle decays pretty much immediately after it appears.

According to CERN spokesperson Tiziano Camporesi, the increased precision means physicists are now “in a good position to look at the Higgs boson from every possible angle.”

Scientists believe that the Large Hadron Collider is basically capable now of simulating conditions close to those at the inception of the universe…which is awesome, but, according to Stephen Hawking, it might also explode the whole universe (here’s how to check). Looks like they don’t call it the God particle for nothing.

---

If you love space, check out the Space Scouts Summer Adventure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdcU4nKKV2E

Scientists Getting Closer to the God Particle