Scientists may have discovered God particle

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, Jul 4:

at the CERN research centre near Geneva said today that they have found a new subatomic particle that may well be the Higgs boson.

Joe Incandela, spokesman for one of the two teams hunting for the so-called God particle, told a gathering of top physicists and special guests at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva: "This is a preliminary result, but we think it is very strong and very solid."

According to Incandela, the CMS team found a boson that weighs 125.3 giga electron volts (GeV). Fabiola Gianotti who spoke on behalf of the team conducting the Atlas experiment at the LHC subsequently said that they too had observed "a new particle in the mass region around 126 GeV."

Simultaneously John Womersley, chief executive of the UK's Science & Technology Facilities Council, said at an event in London: "I can confirm that a particle has been discovered that is consistent with the Higgs boson theory."

The 'God particle' is very significant as only it can corroborate the Standard Model, an intellectual framework explaining how the universe works, that was devised way back in the 1970s.

The Standard Model postulates that the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago created an invisible energy field wherein some particles acquired mass while others did not.

It is believed that the Higgs boson plays an important role in this phenomenon. The particle is named after British researcher Peter Higgs who came up with the underlying theory.

OneIndia News