Posted on 12/06/2001 4:46:03 AM PST by Darth Reagan
LONDON (Reuters) - After years of searching and months of sifting through data, scientists have still not found the elusive sub-atomic particle that could help to unravel the secrets of the universe, a science magazine said on Wednesday.
The Higgs boson, the missing link which could explain why matter has mass and other fundamental laws of particle physics, is still missing -- and physicists fear it may not exist.
``It's more likely than not that there is no Higgs,'' John Swain, of Northeastern University in Boston, told New Scientist magazine.
Scientists have been searching for the Higgs particle ever since Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University first proposed in the 1960s that it could explain why matter has mass.
Using the world's largest particle accelerator at the CERN (news - web sites) nuclear physics lab near Geneva, scientists had hunted for the Higgs boson, which has been dubbed the ``God particle,'' until the accelerator was closed late last year.
Accelerators hurl particles at nearly the speed of light on a collision course to break them up so scientists can study the nature of matter.
Scientists of the Electroweak Working Group at CERN, who had searched for the Higgs, said they had found no evidence of it at the energies where they had expected to find it.
``We've eliminated most of the hunting area,'' Neil Calder, of CERN, told the magazine.
New Scientist said the problem for physicists is that, without the Higgs particle, they do not have a viable theory of matter.
CERN adjourned the search for the Higgs when it closed the LEP (Large Electron-Positron) accelerator, but it is building a Large Hadron Collider that will be able to smash particles at even higher energies in 2007.
That's easy for you to say.
Indeed? Oh yes, I forgot...the sound barrier will never be broken either. Thanks, but I'll wait for the data from Tevatron.
Thanks for the bump, RA :)
That was Eve's problem.
I don't know a single person who's not afflicted with it to some degree. Do you?
Yeah, and if it just "plays the same role" isn't it just acting and someone will catch it sooner or later.
Are you saying, then, that the photon is the God Particle? :-)
"Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning."
-Hesiod, Works and Days
Not at all. But in a morally neutral world where scientists are scrambling to create life in a laboratory while simultaneously their counterparts are slaughtering millions of innocent babies, and a world where we've developed the ability and power to blow ourselves into oblivion, maybe He thinks it best that there are just some things we don't need to know.
Why would He start that now? Under that logic, God would have prevented man from self-destruction long ago--woulda stopped Adam from partaking of that fruit.......I don't think he intervenes as far as that's concerned.
Some theologians would say that is because we are all sons and daughters of Eve -- Original Sin, and all that!
Well, if it weren't for that darned curiousity, we'd be cavemen/women awww...cavepersons, without combs and toothbrushes, still beating our food to death in the wild
I thought they subsequently admitted to being a little hasty in that claim? Anyway the above article seems to be their final assessment of the data, and the Higgs was nowhere to be found. If it doesn't turn up by 130Gev or so, there's going to be a lot of red-faced physicists -- claiming that it's really there because the theory says so but it must be invisible just isn't going to sit very well. (Sounds a little like religion, doesn't it?)
Personally, I hope they don't find it in the hadron collider either. It would be a lot more entertaining!!
Curiosity? Couldn't care less... ;-)
I'm convinced that science "journalists" all ought to be thrashed with a large ballbat on a regular basis for using this sort of purple rhetoric. "God particle" indeed - the Higgs boson has absolutely nothing to do with any sort of deity, whether it be Yahweh, Allah, Kali, Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin. It's particle physics, f'Petessake, NOT THEOLOGY.
Exactly. If I try to imagine a person with absolutely no sense of curiousity, the only word I can find that comes close to describing it is "souless".
It is the nature of man. And sometimes we are.
To a point I agree. I don't think He intervenes in our day to day self destructive behaviors other than to hope we seek Him and stop doing foolish things. I DO think, however, that he will not allow "man" to destroy the world - unless that's how He intends to accomplish His plan.
I'm functioning on way to little sleep today to think this through clearly. But all I'm really trying to say is that there are things in the mind of God that man will never know -- at least not on this side of eternity.
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