HIGGS BOSON, the "God Particle

HIGGS BOSON, the "God Particle"

“There must be a particle with a single mass” – Higgs Boson. This is one thing I remembered on the first part of the lecture I attended last January 29, 2014 which was conducted by a well-known researcher, Mr. Andre David. His lecture mainly focused on the long-time mystery of the Higgs Boson. What does Higgs Boson really mean?

                Based on what I knew and heard before, this Higgs boson is also known as the “God Particle”. This happened when CERN announced in 2012 that they had found a new particle which contributed to the mystery on how the universe has been formed. It was even said that the Higgs Boson is “responsible for all the mass in the universe”. This particle was thought to be non-existing and is beyond scientists’ imagination. The scientists then saw a thing in a universe that they could not even understand and unravel. In addition, according to the website of CERN,

“Just after the big bang, the Higgs field was zero, but as the universe cooled and the temperature fell below a critical value, the field grew spontaneously so that any particle interacting with it acquired a mass. The more a particle interacts with this field, the heavier it is. Particles like the photon that do not interact with it are left with no mass at all. Like all fundamental fields, the Higgs field has an associated particle – the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is the visible manifestation of the Higgs field, rather like a wave at the surface of the sea” (http://home.web.cern.ch/).

This mystery alarmed the scientists and urged them to conduct a tough investigation to fully understand it.

                According to Mr. David, Science has always been progressing; it is stepping through paradigms. We may know more things in the future which weren’t yet discovered before or in the present time. We discover things step-by-step. For example, humans hundreds of years ago discovered fire. A time passed by, we came up with the invention of candles until we discovered electricity which paved the way to the invention of light bulb up to the discovery of LED (Light-emitting Diodes) light bulbs. He wanted us to understand that if there are no discoveries then there will be no inventions that can become ubiquitous. Thus, the ubiquity of these discoveries and inventions greatly affect the society because these show its value to the society.

                The terms used in the forum were somehow technical that I could not completely understand what Mr. David would want to imply. However, I could understand that the study about the Higgs Boson is also same with other discoveries and inventions in the world. All we have to understand that not all things can easily be discovered and explained by science. As what Mr. David said, everything is a step-by-step process. The things that we discovered now are still progressing and that in the future, we may still invent new things out of those discoveries. Same thing with Higgs Boson, scientists hardly thought of it before until it came out and gave way for scientists to understand and discover the facts about it.