Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Higgs Boson: The God Particle

From ABC News:

After decades of careful experiment, physicists say they have found the "strongest indication to date" to prove the existence of the Higgs boson -- a subatomic particle so important to the understanding of space, time and matter that the physicist Leon Lederman nicknamed it "the God particle."

The announcement today, based on experiments at the Department of Energy's Fermilab near Chicago and other institutions, is not the final word, but it's very close. And it comes just before a major meeting this week in Australia, where more findings will be announced from the giant underground particle accelerator at CERN, the great physics lab in the Alps on the French-Swiss border.

"This is one of the cornerstones of how we understand the universe," said Rob Roser, a Fermilab physicist, "and if it's not there, we have to go back and check our assumptions about how the universe exists."

...Physicists say the Higgs boson would help explain why we, and the rest of the universe, exist. It would explain why the matter created in the Big Bang has mass, and is able to coalesce. Without it, as CERN explained in a background paper, "the universe would be a very different place…. no ordinary matter as we know it, no chemistry, no biology, and no people."

"Physicists say the Higgs boson would help explain why we, and the rest of the universe, exist."

Really?

The Higgs boson would explain WHY we exist?

I don't see how.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

In the physical sense. The Higgs Boson gives things Mass.

Not in the philosophical sense at all.