A half-century scientific quest culminated early Wednesday as physicists announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle — one theorized to be so fundamental that without it, nothing could exist.
Dubbed the Higgs boson — or the “God particle,” to the chagrin of scientists — the particle is thought to create a sort of force field that permeates the universe, imbuing everything that we can see and touch with the fundamental property known as mass.
Video
The Washington Post’s Brian Vastag explains the importance of finding the ‘God particle,’ or as scientists prefer, the Higgs boson particle.
Video
The ‘God particle’ and big data | IBM Research’s Software VP, David McQueeney speaks with the Post’s Emi Kolawole about why there is no ‘golden screw’ for big data.
“To the layman I now say, I think we have it,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director general of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, immediately after physicists presented compelling evidence for the new particle at a seminar in Geneva.
“Do you agree?” he asked the several hundred scientists packing CERN’s main auditorium.
Applause broke out. The video feed from CERN showed Peter Higgs, the University of Edinburgh physicist who theorized the existence of this exotic particle in 1964, tearing up.
“We have a discovery,” said Heuer. “We have discovered a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson. It’s a historic milestone today.”
The scientists at CERN then stood, applauded and cheered for a full minute.
“I have the impression you are all happy,” said Heuer.
Moments later, Higgs stood and said, “For me, it’s really an incredible thing that happened in my lifetime.”
While there were typical scientist-esque notes of caution — a CERN statement called the discovery “preliminary” — scientists around the world celebrated the moment.
A video feed from Melbourne, Australia, where an international physics conference is set to begin, showed an auditorium packed with cheering scientists.
“One of the most exciting weeks of my life,” said Joe Lykken, a theoretical physicist who worked on one of the two CERN experiments that found evidence of the new particle.
At Fermilab, long-time home of the U.S. high-energy physics community, some 300 people stuffed into two rooms to watch a video feed from Geneva, said Don Lincoln, a Fermilab physicist who contributed to the CERN experiments.
“It’s incredible,” said Lincoln. “People were riveted. Discovery is what scientists live for.”
At Columbia University in New York, 75 people shared a bottle of champagne brought by experimental physicist Michael Tuts, one of the more than 6,000 scientists who contributed to the discovery.
“I’m still astonished that at 3 a.m. on the Fourth of July you can gather” so many people excited about the arcane field of subatomic physics, Tuts said. High school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and professors all shared the bubbly after the discovery became clear.
“We toasted this,” said Tuts. “It was great fun to see the culmination of years and years of work.”
With a self-imposed deadline of July 4 — set two years ago to line up with the conference in Melbourne — CERN physicists raced in recent days to collect and analyze enough data to say they had, indeed, found a new particle that looked like the long-sought Higgs.
As late as Tuesday, two teams pored over results from the last run of high-energy subatomic collisions at the huge Large Hadron Collider straddling the French-Swiss border.
Dubbed the Higgs boson — or the “God particle,” to the chagrin of scientists — the particle is thought to create a sort of force field that permeates the universe, imbuing everything that we can see and touch with the fundamental property known as mass.
Video
The Washington Post’s Brian Vastag explains the importance of finding the ‘God particle,’ or as scientists prefer, the Higgs boson particle.
Video
The ‘God particle’ and big data | IBM Research’s Software VP, David McQueeney speaks with the Post’s Emi Kolawole about why there is no ‘golden screw’ for big data.
“To the layman I now say, I think we have it,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director general of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, immediately after physicists presented compelling evidence for the new particle at a seminar in Geneva.
“Do you agree?” he asked the several hundred scientists packing CERN’s main auditorium.
Applause broke out. The video feed from CERN showed Peter Higgs, the University of Edinburgh physicist who theorized the existence of this exotic particle in 1964, tearing up.
“We have a discovery,” said Heuer. “We have discovered a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson. It’s a historic milestone today.”
The scientists at CERN then stood, applauded and cheered for a full minute.
“I have the impression you are all happy,” said Heuer.
Moments later, Higgs stood and said, “For me, it’s really an incredible thing that happened in my lifetime.”
While there were typical scientist-esque notes of caution — a CERN statement called the discovery “preliminary” — scientists around the world celebrated the moment.
A video feed from Melbourne, Australia, where an international physics conference is set to begin, showed an auditorium packed with cheering scientists.
“One of the most exciting weeks of my life,” said Joe Lykken, a theoretical physicist who worked on one of the two CERN experiments that found evidence of the new particle.
At Fermilab, long-time home of the U.S. high-energy physics community, some 300 people stuffed into two rooms to watch a video feed from Geneva, said Don Lincoln, a Fermilab physicist who contributed to the CERN experiments.
“It’s incredible,” said Lincoln. “People were riveted. Discovery is what scientists live for.”
At Columbia University in New York, 75 people shared a bottle of champagne brought by experimental physicist Michael Tuts, one of the more than 6,000 scientists who contributed to the discovery.
“I’m still astonished that at 3 a.m. on the Fourth of July you can gather” so many people excited about the arcane field of subatomic physics, Tuts said. High school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and professors all shared the bubbly after the discovery became clear.
“We toasted this,” said Tuts. “It was great fun to see the culmination of years and years of work.”
With a self-imposed deadline of July 4 — set two years ago to line up with the conference in Melbourne — CERN physicists raced in recent days to collect and analyze enough data to say they had, indeed, found a new particle that looked like the long-sought Higgs.
As late as Tuesday, two teams pored over results from the last run of high-energy subatomic collisions at the huge Large Hadron Collider straddling the French-Swiss border.