Post date: Jul 04, 2012 2:12:26 PM
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND (JULY 4, 2012) (REUTERS) - Peter Higgs, the 83-year-old British physicist who proposed the existence of the boson which bears his name in the 1960s, said he was happy he finally proved right by the CERN research centre on Wednesday (July 4).
Scientist Peter Higgs, who proposed the existence of the boson which bears his name in the 1960s, satisfied with CERN discovery of new subatomic particle.
Scientists at Europe's CERN research centre announced earlier on Wednesday they had found a new subatomic particle that could be the Higgs boson, the basic building block of the universe.
Higgs was at CERN to welcome news of what, to the discomfort of many scientists, some commentators have labelled the "God particle".
Two separate teams at CERN worked independently through data from experiments in which trillions of particles were smashed into each other, hunting for tiny divergences that might betray the existence of the boson. Both arrived at similar results, giving confidence to those making Wednesday's announcement.
Higgs said he was satisfied to be proved right by the discovery.
"Well, for me personnaly it's just the confirmation of something that I did 48 years ago and it's very satisfying for me to be proved right in some way what I did 48 years ago wasn't very specific it wasn't actually about electoric theory, it was about a type of theory, and so I'm not particularly bothered about whether this is a single exposal or one of several so it's very satisfying. From the point of view of future physics it seems to me that it's in one way the end of an era in that, it seems to complete the Standard Model but the more important thing is that the study of it will lead on to what lies beyond the standard model of physics which we hope will have more interesting connections with cosmology, the dark matter problem and this sort of things."
The Higgs theory explains how particles clumped together to form stars, planets and life itself.
Without the Higgs particle, the particles that make up the universe would have remained a formless soup, the theory goes.
Asked about the possibility to be give a Nobel prize, Higgs answered: "I don't have close friends on the Nobel committee."
It is the last undiscovered piece of the Standard Model that describes the fundamental make-up of the universe. The model is for physicists what the theory of evolution is for biologists.
What scientists do not yet know from the latest findings is whether the particle they have discovered is the Higgs boson as described by the Standard Model. It could also be a variant of the Higgs idea or an entirely new subatomic particle that could force a rethink on the fundamental structure of matter.
The last two possibilities are, in scientific terms, the most exciting.