The Missing Particle

LHC Cathedral
from
Cosmos
Magazine

credit:
Mark Evans

Wishing you all a Magical weekend!
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The missing (God) particle’s real name is the Higgs boson, named after British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs who first proposed its existence. It is believed to be the last missing piece to the puzzle of the so-called Standard Model – the 20 fundamental forces and particles that, in various permutations and combinations, account for everything around us – light, magnetism, gravity and all forms of matter.

The Higgs is what supposedly gives mass to fundamental particles, such as quarks and leptons, which in turn constitute neutrons, protons and electrons, which in turn make up atoms and molecules and eventually this page, you and the entire universe. The hadron of the Large Hadron Collider is the classification for neutrons and protons, from the Greek ‘hadros’ for strong, because they are held together in the nucleus of an atom by the strong nuclear force.

The God Particle could well turn out not to be the end of this quest to understand the ultimate nature of matter but instead the beginning of yet another phase.
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Particle masses from intersecting braneworlds from Lubos Motl.
“Supersymmetry must exist if the universe is going to make sense”
Fermilab Statement on LHC Magnet Test Failure 27 March 2007.
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