They’re close but they haven’t found it just yet – that’s the latest from the team of scientists on the hunt for the elusive “God particle” anyway.
Recent results from work done in the Tevatron collider at the Fermi National Lab near Chicago have supported the findings of an earlier experiment carried out by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) which found evidence of the Higgs Boson or the so called “God particle”.The Higgs Boson is the last missing piece of the Standard Model which details what the universe is made of and how particles within it interact, but it still only exists in theory because it has never been detected.
As a result of the two teams of scientists finding strikingly similar evidence for the particle despite having used different methods to look for it, the new findings support the growing belief that the Higgs has been pinned down at last. However, many leading scientists believe more evidence is required to confirm a discovery and some even still believe the particle does not exist.
Robert Orr, Professor of Physics at University of Toronto, is optimistic about the new findings but remains wary about making any assumptions just yet. “The two CERN experiments and the two Fermilab experiments all seem to be seeing something at the same wort of mass, he said.
“None of them is a clincher on its own. However, the four taken together, with our expectations from previous experiments, makes it start to look as if something is really there. Probably the significance is still not at the ” clincher level”.”
Although, the Higgs has yet to be observed by either team of scientists, both have narrowed down the area where it can be found and they know where it isn’t.
“Personally , I am going to wait until the CERN experiments have much better results later this year before I say the Higgs has been observed. Even if there is a clear observation later this year, we will still have work to do before deciding whether this observation is definitively a ” standards model” Higgs”, said Orr.
Finding the “God particle” would confirm a 50-year-old theory proposed by a number of scientists including British physicist Peter Higgs which explains how other particles gain their mass.
“If the mathematically elegant Higgs Mechanism turns out to correspond to physical reality it will be yet another confirmation of the beauty and elegance of the universe we live in; and the amazing fact that we can understand reality through mathematics,” added Orr.
