To cheers and standing ovations from scientists, the world's biggest atom smasher claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle Wednesday, calling it "consistent" with the long-sought Higgs boson -- popularly known as the "God particle" -- that helps explain what gives all matter in the universe size and shape.
"We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics," Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists.
He said the newly discovered subatomic particle is a boson, but he stopped just shy of claiming outright that it is the Higgs boson itself -- an extremely fine distinction.
"As a layman, I think we did it," he told the elated crowd. "We have a discovery. We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson."
The Higgs boson, which until now has been a theoretical particle, is seen as the key to our understanding of why matter has mass, which combines with gravity to give an object weight. The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton's discovery of it: Gravity was there all the time before Newton explained it. But now scientists know what a boson is and can put that knowledge to further use.
Yet another incredible step forward for science out of the darkness of ignorance. This is an amazing time to be alive, and one that I hope truly signifies a new era of enlightenment.
Just imagine how much we can learn about our origins and the building blocks of the universe with this new knowledge to guide us?
Update: I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson is undoubtedly happy with the discovery but less happy about what it ways about our country.
Happy B'day to Malia.
ReplyDeleteYes, she's 14 and what a cutie. The Obama's are raising two very special girls.
DeleteI'll bet $10,000 they go to college and are never in a reality show.
DeleteBill - or getting humped on DWTS
DeleteIt appears they may have finally found that elusive goddamn particle. This is exciting stuff. This will set in motion so many new lines of inquiry. I hope Higgs gets a Nobel.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans will pass a law declaring that the Higgs boson does not exist.
ReplyDeleteYup!
DeleteAs a Christian I think faith and science go hand in hand. God created the universe but how did he do it? That's where the science comes in.
ReplyDeleteI respect your views and Christianity, but I don't agree. I believe in science and I don't believe in an all-knowing eye in the sky being that created us. We humans don't know how everything started, yet. Someday, not in my lifetime obviously, the answers will come.
DeleteThere is no contradiction in what you believe. Science cannot explain why the universe exists- only how it came to exist.
DeleteOne day we may know why God does what She does.
I don't believe in something that isn't proven. I'll take science over a christian/bible any day. I feel that many, many people were preached through parents teaching their children to believe in something that really doesn't exist to an intelligent mind. Until someone can tell me that a God really exists through proof, I will continually be a smarter person and understand that it is all a false pre tense and something that someone invented years ago to control the mass of the people.
DeleteI'm just going to keep on guiding my grandson how to have fun, teach him right from wrong, and how to love and how to guide him when he needs some guidance.
DeleteGod has no sex, God is not a he or a she. Christians are dead wrong if they think God is a man or male. That is poppycock. How can you call yourself a 'christian' and believe this nonsense. It is just a patriarchal approach to things. God is. Period. No human attributes are to be foisted upon God. That is man's idea and there is NOTHING sacred about it.
DeleteGod is the space we share ~ to me.
DeleteThe God that is literally everywhere fills the space between our atoms.
Right, God is spirit, knowable only through transcendence. A high score in the category of existential intelligence as defined by Gardner is important here. A low score may mean one will never reach this understanding.
DeleteNB--Many Christians get this. Disregard the fundamentalists. Hark back to some of our mystics, like Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, or in our time, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, etc. Very, very Zen.
For those of an intellectual bent, read St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Pascal, Kierkegaard.
Modern journalists sharing their experiences include Andrew Sullivan and the agnostic Robert Wright. Sullivan has had personal commune with God. Wright, the intellectual agnostic, acknowledges that some of us who have faith today may be going in the right direction in regard to the purpose of the universe. Powerful stuff.
This is the last undetected particle predicted by the Standard Model. It is the crown jewel. It is a manifestation of a field that permeates our universe and gives the stars and your eye lashes mass.
ReplyDeleteThis announcement is made with 99% certainty it is the Higg´s boson. It will take another two to three years for confirmation. CERN is giving itself a little wiggle room by saying it is ¨identical¨ to the Higg´s. IOW, it is like saying you are seeing your best friend in the distance. Or his identical twin.
They found it and know it. Our brightest minds are cheering and weeping with joy for a reason.
Several scientists will get a call from Stockholm.
Remember this day.
Waiting for you to post a wedding announcement for Bristol and Gino.
ReplyDeleteDid Tripp really call Gino daddy?
Ouch, that's gotta sting.
He calls Aunt Sadie ¨Mommy¨ and Sunny ¨Mommy¨ and Willow ¨Mommy¨ and Todd ¨Mommy,¨ too.
DeletedeGrasse has it exactly right...and on more levels than are concerned with scientific achievement.
ReplyDeleteI love Neil deGrasse Tyson!
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
We were building a 40 teV collider in Texas, three times the size of CERN, that was cancelled in the early nineties due to cost overruns. We don't just suck at science, we suck at big projects; everyone gets greedy and looses sight of what they're supposed to be doing.
ReplyDeleteSo, good job CERN. take a bow, not just for finding a Higgs.
The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was approved by Reagan, and canceled by a Democratic congress.
DeleteWe spent one billion dollars digging a hole in Waxahachie and another billion dollars filling the hole back up.
That is the wisdom of our Senate.
Clinton got to choose between funding the super collider and funding the genome project. While the super collider is cool, the US doesn't have to be first at everything.
DeleteI think Bill made the right choice: I think the genome project will have a far greater impact in our lifetimes.
Clinton tried to prevent the cancellation by asking Congress to continue "to support this important and challenging effort" through completion because "abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science"
DeletePresident Clinton signed the bill which finally cancelled the project on October 31, 1993, stating regret at the "serious loss" for science.
President Clinton was right. Our ¨wise¨ Senate was wrong.
He had no choice.
I hope you´re right.
I was born at the height of the 20th Century's space race. Where is the 21st Century American's will to move forward and be the best in the world?
ReplyDeleteThat will is in my children.
DeleteMy job, as their father, is to knock people like Sarah out of their way.
Doing a happy jig.
ReplyDeleteWe may be broke...but we still have our brains.
And that's not to say you don't. Damn,I get myself into all sorts of trouble.
ReplyDeleteI have a weakness for Irish girls like you.
Deleteme, too, also... too.
DeleteIn honor of the apparent discovery of the Higgs boson particle, let's stop referring to the Higgs boson particle as "the god particle".
ReplyDeleteScience +6.02214179 ×10^23!!
Avogadro is my favorite mole.
DeleteLeon Lederman, former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Lab and winner of the Nobel Prize for physics, entitled his book ¨The God Particle...¨
Delete...because his publishers would not allow him to entitle it ¨The Goddamn Particle.¨
@Anon 1:18pm
DeleteTouché!
THREE shay, even!
It is amazing what we can do with deductive reasoning and mathematics.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteMost professional astronomers do not own telescopes.
They see the wonders of the universe in their equations.
As a laywoman living in Geneva surrounded by scientists working at CERN, they helped me understand a little about these wonders in simple words.
DeleteAnd yes, most of them are dreamers. Big party this weekend.
Just love Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Stars and Stripes Forever? The Republican Plot to Fracture America
ReplyDelete...It is incredibly sad that in America today, one political party has convinced their sycophants that it is acceptable for the richest country on Earth to deny healthcare to over 30-million Americans, block efforts to give all Americans a living wage job and security in their old age, and to discriminate against women, people of color, gays, and the poor. Christian conservatives have convinced their supporters that their bible supersedes the law of the land and that giving all of the nation’s assets to the wealthy and their corporations is how they achieve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the most oft-repeated questions from nearly every person this author interviews is; “why are Republicans taking what little I have left to give to the rich; do they not care about the rest of us?” The simple answer is no, they do not care. However, it is worse than just not caring, it is the support and contempt for Americans from other Americans and it has spread like a cancer throughout the conservative movement prompting supporters to vilify poor and middle class Americans who are the backbone of this country, and the “me first” attitude has morphed into a “me only” mindset inherent in the Libertarian movement.
Republicans have been so successful convincing their supporters they are “real Americans,” that a large segment of the population despises other Americans who oppose conservatives stripping away wealth to benefit the rich. It is certainly no source of pride that Republicans are openly working to destroy the government of the United States, or that their presidential candidate promises to dismantle large portions of the government to replace with for-profit corporations, or that cutting education, police, firefighters, and public sector employees to make room for more entitlements for the wealthy is a noble pursuit. What makes matters worse, is that Republicans use religion and racism to pit American against American to distract from their corporate agenda, and that their never-ending propaganda demeaning the opposition is driving right-wing extremists toward armed insurrection and a race war.
http://www.politicususa.com/stars-stripes-forever-republican-plot-fracture-america.html
Thank you, great post and link!
DeleteThe problem I have with creationists vs. people that believe in evolution is this: creationists DEMAND that people that believe in evolution provide proof. But, creationists cannot and will not provide proof of creation because they don't 'have to.' They have 'faith'. People, there is NO proof of creation at all. Never has been, never will be.
ReplyDeleteThe creationists are good at debates. They tirelessly train. Liberty University is a command post. Relax. It is a facade. Like Sarah. Whenever all the evidence is laid out on the table (in a court of law for instance) they lose. Every time. No exceptions.
DeleteYay America!
Video of "Observatory at the top of the world provides rare view of outer space"
ReplyDeleteScientists from around the world are building the world’s most advanced radio telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert, on a plateau half-way between Earth and space above 40 percent of the planet’s atmosphere.
The observatory, referred to by the acronym ALMA, officially known as the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, is the highest ever built. Located at 16,500 feet, the antennas (soon to be 66 of them) will pick up radio and microwave signals from the edge of the universe to see things in space that were once invisible.
http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/04/12545386-observatory-at-the-top-of-the-world-provides-rare-view-of-outer-space?lite
I just have to say WOW. This would be mindblowing to see. This is brilliant!!
The discoveries -- the experiments -- I can hear heads exploding already!! The bagger heads will be spinning as they won't be able to deny the discoveries -- the information fast enough. They'll never keep up!!
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science." - Albert Einstein
ReplyDeleteBy Chris Wickham and Robert Evans, Reuters
GENEVA -- Scientists at Europe's CERN research centre have found a new subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe, which appears to be the boson imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.
Higgs, now 83, from Edinburgh University was among six theorists who in the early 1960s proposed the existence of a mechanism by which matter in the universe gained mass. Higgs himself argued that if there were an invisible field responsible for the process, it must be made up of particles.
He and some of the others were at CERN to welcome news of what, to the embarrassment of many scientists, some commentators have labelled the "God particle," for its role in turning the Big Bang into an ordered universe. Clearly overwhelmed, his eyes welling up, Higgs told the symposium of fellow researchers: "It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime."
How beautiful that Peter Higgs lived to have seen this extraordinary and absolutely amazing discovery!
Nobel Prizes await.
Hoorah for Dr. Tyson !!
ReplyDeleteAND, he's absolutely correct... Gotta send money to the Klan, the John Birch Society and the pee-party.. We don't need no stinking Super Collider !!
Ask the Monkey Queen, she'll tell ya...
Applause, applause for all who made this discovery possible. I have the highest admiration for those whose minds can perceive these possibilities, and special thoughts for the aged Mr. Peter Higgs whose brain wrapped itself around the idea of this particle a half century ago.
ReplyDeleteApplause and appreciation also for Dr. deGrasse Tyson, who, like Sagan before him, manages to make the universe more comprehensible for the rest of us.
Last but not least: I hope you all had a wonderful "Interdependence" Day.
Before you head off to sleep on this night after the first full moon since the summer solstice, please give this a thought:
This beautiful blue marble in this particular solar system is in many ways a finely balanced, finite system and if we do not abandon the notion that humans rule the world, we will kill that which sustains us, and of course, ourselves along with it. So, walk lightly upon this Earth.
Peace...fromthediagonal
well said, di
DeleteDrs. Sagan & Tyson: +3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679!!
glad to see you posted this gryphen. I am curious to see if this is the discovery that takes us into the new age (end of the mayan calendar) and shifts the thinking past most of the petty bullshit that keeps humans preoccupied. this kind of thing could create a major consciousness shift, which would be an excellent thing! woot bring it on!
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteBeldar Pi:
ReplyDeleteThis compliment from you,is quite gratifying, and I thank you. Let's keep going even if it may be fromthediagonal.
Are you inferring that finding the "God particle" proves there is no God?
ReplyDelete