Items of Interest January 16, 2012 Issue

Search for 'the God particle' continues

John Yemma

“Editor’s View,” Daily News Briefing The Christian Science Monitor December 13, 2011

In the world of physics, the elusive field associated with the Higgs boson is believed to confer mass to particles that make up the material universe. Finding verifiable proof of the Higgs boson would shore up the Standard Model of physics—the model based on quarks and leptons as the fundamental building blocks for atoms, as well as the family of particles associated with the forces that act on them.

That’s the model, if you will, of a universe evolved by atomic force. [On December 13], scientists from the European Center for Nuclear Research are scheduled to report findings that may show evidence of the Higgs. Or not. Even if Higgs doesn’t exist, that tells us something about physics.

It has taken the biggest of big science to get here—thousands of very smart people, massive particle accelerators, and billions of dollars in funding. What good is this research? While there’s no practical application right now, greater understanding of how physics works brings new insights—and perhaps new technologies at some point. But here’s what Higgs can never be: “the God particle,” as some people term it. For one thing, what put Higgs there? For another, who says matter is all there is?

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