Higgs or God? Both? None?

 What is this all about “God’s particle”?

Last week CERN* has announced that they have found strong evidences to prove the existence of the Higgs boson. This is a subatomic particle that is important to the understanding of space, time and matter that the physicist Leon Lederman nicknamed "the God particle."

This particle was first proposed in the 1960s by the English physicist Peter Higgs. Since then, efforts to find it have taken decades. Several experiments have been done by independent teams to ensure accuracy and finally there are some evidences that prove Higgs hypothesis.

But why is this so important? After all it is a tinny particle visible for only a fraction of a second! It is believed that the Higgs boson would help explain how we, and the rest of the universe, exist. It would explain why the matter created in the Big Bang has mass. Because without it, the other particles in the universe wouldn't have mass and would all continue to travel at the speed of light. That's it.

 

But better than me, have a look at this video explaining it in a simple way.

what-is-a-higgs-boson-video 

More work will be needed to be certain that what scientists have seen is a Higgs, however.

And if you are really keen to learn why we should really care about this, have a look a this link:

higgs-boson-why-you-should-care-about-the-god-particle-and-sadly-why-you-dont/

If you want to explain what the Higgs is to someone else, have a look at this link that will give you some hints and tips regarding the person you would be explaing it:

how-explain-higgs-boson-discovery

And if you want to read CERN’s press release, here is the link too.

CERNPressReleases/Higgs

Now that scientists are starting to find evidences of how “all has started”, what do you think about the creationist theory? 

Let’s give this a thought shall we?

*CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva and houses scientist from all over the world. If you have read Dan Browns’ Angels and Demons book, it was where the anti-matter was stolen from.