The God particle
Image via Wikipedia So what exactly did happen a billionth of a second after the Big Bang ? That’s the question particle physicists from around the world are trying to answer via a little science experiment using the Large Hadron Collider ( LHC ). This week, researchers reported that they are one step closer to verifying the existence of the elusive Higgs Boson (a.k.a. the “ God particle”). If they find it, it will be one of the biggest scientific discoveries in 50 years. “Our whole picture of how matter exists within the universe depends on the existence of the Higgs Boson,” said project physicist Dr. Robert Orr. And it seems we’ll spare no expense or effort to prove it’s there. Budget? $10 billion. The plan? Fly protons around a 17-mile-long ring at 11,000-revolutions-per-second (99.99991% of the speed of light) and then smash them together. The purpose behind it all? To try to understand how ma Image via Wikipedia tter and mass came to be! To try to understand how...