Does the “God Particle” exist?

To cheers and standing ovations, scientists at the world’s
biggest atom smasher claimed the discovery of a new
subatomic particle Wednesday, calling it “consistent” with
the long-sought Higgs boson _ popularly known as the “God
particle” _ that helps explain what gives all matter in
the universe size and shape.

“We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle
physics,” Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for
Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists.

Higgs boson is something they have believed for decades
must exist, but they have never been able to prove.

It’s something that balances all of the physics equations.
It is what scientists believe explains why some subatomic
particles have mass and others don’t. Now before your
eyes glass over, just realize that proving its existence
would validate everything we know about how the universe
operates.

If it doesn’t exist, University of Washington physics
professor Gordon Watts told MyNorthwest.com, it’s back to
the drawing board.

“If in the standard model we don’t have the Higgs, then
everything is clearly wrong, like so wrong all the
experiments that we’ve done or many of the experiments
we’ve done, we would completely get it wrong,” he said.

Professor Watts has been searching for the Higgs for 17
years. He’s done research at the $10 billion super-
collider in Geneva that was designed to prove it exists.

“If we didn’t find it, it would be fascinating because
there has to be something like the Higgs there. Otherwise,
we’re really wrong,” Watts said. “So if there’s not
something like the Higgs there, that means that we have to
completely re-imagine how it is that nature works.”

So how will tonight’s announcement impact your life?

Watts said the immediate impact will be minimal. “If we
find the Higgs or don’t find the Higgs, it will not have
any immediate effect on your world,” he said. “You won’t
suddenly dissolve into a mass of goo or something like
that.”

But discovering the Higgs, Watts believes, is just below
Einstein’s theory of relativity. It’s that important to
science and understanding how the universe works. He said
the goal is to find ways to create the Higgs in a stable
way so it can be used to benefit man, but he believes that
is decades down the road. Proving the particle exists is
just the first step.

Now for an explanation of what scientists believe the
Higgs is, and my apologies to all the physicists reading
this if my analogies don’t do it justice. And don’t judge
Professor Watts by my understanding, he did a great job
explaining it.

Chris’ Higgs explanation:

The Higgs is a sub-atomic particle that joins together
with other Higgs to create a Higgs Field. Think of the
Higgs as a molecule of water and quantity of water to fill
a glass as the Higgs Field. Quarks and electrons go in
and out of this field. The more mass something has, the
more it interacts with the water. A large person swimming
moves more water than a streamlined fish.

If that’s not doing it for you, try this one. The Higgs
Field is a cocktail party. The quarks and electrons are
the guests. The life of the party has more mass because
it interacts with more of the party. The wallflower has
less mass because it doesn’t talk to anyone.

And if you want to know why it’s called the “God
Particle,” you can thank the editor of a publishing
company. When Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman wrote a
book about the Higgs, his editor didn’t think putting
Higgs in the title was sexy enough. It didn’t grab enough
attention, so the editor called it the “God Particle.”

And Lederman has had to explain himself ever since.