Note: this topic is from April 7, 2008. Thanks rpage.
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Posted on 04/07/2008 8:05:12 PM PDT by rpage3
GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago.
Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson," which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.
"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.
The 78-year-old's original efforts in the early 1960s to explain why the force, dubbed the Higgs field, must exist were dismissed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Today, the existence of the invisible field is widely accepted by scientists, who believe it came into being milliseconds after the Big Bang created the universe some 15 billion years ago.
Finding the Higgs boson would prove this theory right.
CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aims to simulate conditions at the time of that primeval inferno by smashing particles together at near light-speed and so unlock many secrets of the universe.
Higgs was in Geneva to visit CERN for the first time in 13 years in advance of the launch.
Scientists at the centre hope the process will produce clear signs of the boson, dubbed the "God particle" by some, to the displeasure of Higgs, an atheist.
He came up with his theory to explain why mass disappears as matter is broken down to its smallest constituent parts -- molecules, atoms and quarks.
BIG BANG
The normally media-shy physicist, who has spent most of his career at Scotland's Edinburgh University, postulated that matter was weightless at the exact moment of the Big Bang and then much of it promptly gained mass.
This, he argued, must be due to a field which stuck to particles as they passed through it and made them heavy. If this had not happened, matter would have floated free in space and stars and planets would never have formed.
Higgs said he hoped the elusive boson -- which an earlier but less powerful collider at CERN and another at the U.S. Fermilab had failed to detect -- would be identified before his 80th birthday in 2009.
"If it doesn't," he said, "I shall be very, very puzzled."
But there may be no immediate visible proof -- despite some fanciful portrayals of what it might look like -- of the boson's appearance on the ultra-sophisticated computers used by CERN scientists to track the billions of collisions in the LHC.
"It all happens so fast that the appearance of the boson may be hidden in the data collected, and it could take a long time for the analysis to find it," said Higgs.
"I may have to keep the champagne on ice for a while yet."
I am being serious. You said that for any answers, just turn to the Bible. Apparently you didn’t mean that? Perhaps the Bible is a good source for answers to the spiritual world, and the relationship than man has with God, and should have with each other, but it is NOT a science or physical textbook.
I don’t see where I can find Ohm’s Law in the Bible. I don’t see where I can find the Newtonian laws of motion on the Bible. And I don’t see the firing order for a 1963 Mercury 260 V8.
You should be serious about what the Bible IS, not what you think it should be...
You’re not? That explains the fifth-grade literacy. Perhaps you were religiously homeschooled.
Come on now, your showing your true colors!
I don’t see where I can find Ohm’s Law in the Bible. I don’t see where I can find the Newtonian laws of motion on the Bible. And I don’t see the firing order for a 1963 Mercury 260 V8.
Look closer!
You sir, make a mockery of Christianity and the Bible.
For most of the last 2000 years the Church has been the leading force for scientific research. To better know God, we need to also know His creation. It brings insight beyond what we can get without it.
God gave us an intellect and curiosity - to not use them to our full to explore and expand our knowledge of the universe is wasting one of the biggest gifts He gave us.
So tell me - which Genesis story is correct? Because Genesis chapter 1 has the earth, nature, and plants all created before man, over the course of 6 days. Yet Genesis 2 says that it was all created in one day, and that man was created before the plants.
So which is right? One must be wrong...
Maybe the Bible is a spritual/moral guide for life with God and with each other, and not a textbook? If you think otherwise, then answer the question about the Creation stories.
Unless you take every literal word of the Bible (which translation?) as the inerrant Word of God, much like Muslims believe for the Koran? I believe the teachings and principles of the Bible are inerrant, but the actual words themselves? That’s what separates us from the Muslims - our understanding that God is not simply constrained to some words, handed down verbally over centuries and translated a dozen times.
You sir, make a mockery of yourself by your ridiculous statements, you do not know me or my relationship with God so how can you judge me? As far as I'm concerned, this is idol conservation and I will have none of it!
conservation = conversation
The fact remains that you made a statement, repeated it multiple times, and have no proof - the Bible does NOT contain all answers. Enjoy, heretic...
Enjoy, heretic...
You are certainly of Satan!
I remember my mother, who was born in 1911, telling me how when she was a young child was taught that the atom couldn’t be broken.
I imagine that people who believed it could be were branded as anti-believers and Satanists, much as they are on this thread.
We all know how THAT turned out, and without it America might very well have fallen.
Ironic, America, blessed by God, saved by Satanists.
This may very well turn out the same way.
Note: this topic is from April 7, 2008. Thanks rpage.
Thx Thx.
So, what are their speculations of THEN WHAT?
He’s just thinking of his own life, that is, the death part of it.
Thanks for the ping.
I love science and religion. What a world.
:’) My pleasure.
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