Lederman’s Controversial “God Particle”
“You have an exciting two years ahead of you”, said Prof. Hawking as he congratulated Robert Aymar, the Director General of CERN, and the CERN community for their scientific work. During his visit, Prof. Hawking descended 100 metres underground to tour various facilities of the LHC. When asked what he considered to be the most important discoveries that the new experiments can make, Prof. Hawking commented, “There are three candidates: superpartners, black holes and the Higgs”. He considers superpartners and black holes to be the most important findings.
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The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted by the Standard Model of
particle physics, the only particle not yet observed by the Standard—
predicted as a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle. No
experiment to date has yet detected its existence, which is why the LHC at
CERN is gathering so much media attention. Attempting to prove the
existence of a “theoretical particle” will not be an easy task, with the
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) internationally opening
the door with a 13-year development with its monstrous Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) experiment, hoping to solve the mystery.
Even though it has not made an appearance yet, the Higgs boson particle is
the only known particle with “negative pressure’ that pushes space apart,
in addition to originally being theorized that it gives matter its mass.
The problems is that it drives the universe too rapidly, or it forms huge
ripples in space-time. Over twenty years ago, Stephen Hawking believed
that microscopic black holes would make the Higgs particle impossible to
detect, refusing to recognize the LHC would be able to find its quarry.
Using as his main argument, the Universe at the Planck scale which is
dominated by “strange quantum effects” that are known to cause particles
and tiny black holes to pop-in-and-out of existence, it would appear that
the supposed vacuum would be “space-time foam”, consisting of transient
particles and black holes. But on October 2, 2006, Stephen Hawking went on
tour to CERN, visiting the Theory Unit of the Physics Department. A key
figure in the theoretical cosmology field, his presence reinforced the
anticipation of the LHC, and officially made CERN a joining of the best
minds in physics.
Earlier in 1993, Nobel Prize-winning Physicist Leon M. Lederman wrote a
book called, “The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the
Question?”, also published in the American Journal of Physics, Volume 62,
Issue 2 in 1994. Lederman’s book briefly approaches the history of particle physics, with the early Greeks, Einstein, etc., leading the field of quantum physics in the 1900s and ending with the Higgs boson — nicknamed the God Particle. This is because many scientists will hypothesize it, unlocking the very last secrets of the subatomic universe.
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