Higgs Boson Particle

The Higgs Boson particle is a particle which explains the formation of the universe and it most important property :Its mass. Although the the presence of the particle was proposed way back in 1964 it was confirmed only very recently by a large group of scientists working at a high tech research facility called CERN in Switzerland. The amount of research that has been done to find this elusive God Particle is quite amazing. The Large Hadron Collider was built at CERN with the main objective of proving the existence of this particle. The LHC is the worlds largest particle accelerator , spanning over 27 kilometers and the cost of which was estimated to be about $10 billion. Scientists used the LHC to accelerate subatomic particles and create collisions to simulate what might have occurred when the universe was formed. Higgs boson is a very massive particle and decays immediately after it is formed. Hence only a high energy particle accelerator can be used to observe it. On july 4th of this year scientists announced that they had found a particle which was consistent with the Higgs boson although stating that further research and analysis were required before the particle could be identified. The discovery of this particle represents a significant breakthrough in the field of particle physics. The discovery was described as a historic milestone. The particle is said to provide mass for the elementary particles. The idea of the God particle is particularly exciting to physicists as it could point to the existence of new particles and provide deeper ideas about the nature of reality. Physicists say that they would study the particle for year but still cannot come up with a possible explanation of the universe was formed. It still leaves some gaping holes in the theory proposed by scientists called The Standard Model. One important factor that the particle fails to explain is gravity. This is just the beginning, says a spokesman for CERN. Scientists will keep probing the new particle until they

fully understand how it works. In doing so they hope to understand the 96 percent of the universe that remains hidden from view. This may result in the discovery of new particles and even hitherto unknown forces of nature.