{"id":7499,"date":"2012-07-04T12:01:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T17:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kathyschiffer\/?p=7499"},"modified":"2016-09-30T15:58:56","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T20:58:56","slug":"i-see-lots-of-god-particles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/kathyschiffer\/2012\/07\/i-see-lots-of-god-particles\/","title":{"rendered":"I See LOTS of God-Particles!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>This is the day!<\/strong> The science world is panting with excitement, exhilarated because scientists at Europe\u2019s CERN research centre near Geneva have announced that the elusive Higgs boson\u2014<\/strong>the subatomic particle imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs\u2014has been discovered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Reuters, CERN Hadron Collider director general Rolf Heuer told scientists and reporters gathered at the CERN near Geneva that:\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two independent studies of data produced by smashing proton particles together at CERN\u2019s Large Hadron Collider produced a convergent near-certainty on the existence of the new particle. It is unclear whether it is exactly the boson Higgs described.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Higgs boson is a hypothetical elementary particle.<\/strong> Until now, scientists have only conjectured that it exists. If it did, they theorized, this would explain how particles clumped together to form stars, planets and life itself.\u00a0 It would be the most basic of known particles, from which all else in creation is derived.\u00a0 Without the Higgs boson, the theory goes, the universe would have remained a primordial soup, with no organization.<\/p>\n

The Higgs boson got its name from Peter Higgs,<\/strong> a researcher and popular broadcaster from Edinburgh University. In the early 1960s, Higgs hypothesized that there must be a mechanism\u2014an invisible shield\u2014by which matter in the universe gained mass.\u00a0 It\u2019s been popularly called the \u201cGod particle,\u201d and despite scientists\u2019 objections, the nickname has merit:\u00a0 It\u2019s as though God opened his great Hand and caused the Big Bang to explode and expand into a living universe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no scientist,<\/strong> so let me scratch out a simple explanation, with a little help from Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

The Higgs field is a quantum field that fills all of space, and explains why fundamental particles (or elementary particles) such as quarks and electrons have mass. The Higgs boson is an excitation of the Higgs field above its ground state.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s a great explanation for non-scientists:<\/strong><\/p>\n