Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Higgs boson subatomic particle gives mass to matter

An international group of scientists has announced that it has found a subatomic particle that may be the long sought after Higgs boson.The group is working with a theory which suggests the particle gives mass to all matter.

The Higgs boson, of which British physicist Peter Higgs hypothesized the existence in 1964, is the last missing building block which would help physicists explain the formation of the universe.

The 16 other subatomic particles whose presence has been hypothesized since the 1960s in the Standard Model of physics have already been discovered.An international group of scientists, including Japanese researchers, has been trying to discover the Higgs boson at the CERN research center near Geneva in Switzerland since 2008.

The group has been using the Large Hadron Collider, an experimental atom-smasher with a circumference of 27 kilometers, on the Swiss-French border.The experiments involve smashing head-on 2 protons accelerated to the speed of light and analyzing the numerous particles generated by the collision.The group has created some 2,000 trillion collisions, which produced about 2,000 unidentified particles.

The scientists told a news conference at the research center on Wednesday that they have likely observed the Higgs boson, judging by its characteristics.The discovery of the Higgs boson, known as the "God particle," is expected to be an important clue in shedding light on the origin of the universe

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