Does the Higgs Boson Particle Prove Anything At All?
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| CERN-AC-0510028 01 |
The hysteria and publicity about the Higgs boson particle seems to have faded. Perhaps now we can give it a calmer examination.
Some people rave that it is the particle (field) that was sought, and it is somehow proof of the Big Bang. (There are even people who go as far as to say that it proves there is no God, which is an asinine and unscientific statement.) What does it prove, if anything?
Scientists from Europe’s CERN research center presented evidence on July 4, 2012, for a particle that is likely the Higgs boson, the last remaining elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. Does this discovery have relevance for the creation-evolution controversy?
Particles can generally be classified into two categories, according to the quantum mechanical rules that they obey: fermions and bosons. The Higgs particle is called a boson because it falls into the second category.
Evidence for the Higgs boson was obtained from data collected at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, as well as at Fermilab’s Tevatron collider in the United States. Although the Higgs boson has been nicknamed the “God particle,” it is widely agreed that the name is more for publicity than accuracy, and many physicists do not like it. “I detest the name ‘God particle’. I am not particularly religious, but I find the term an ‘in your face’ affront to those who [are],” wrote physicist Vivek Sharma, a leader of the Higgs search. “I do experimental physics not GOD.”You can read the rest of "The Higgs Boson and the Big Bang", here.