God particle

Ricardo J Mercedes Torres

Merging science and religion is something that many people would consider should not be done. We can think that it is somewhat contradictory to try to explain one with the other, but when you have something that is being called “The God Particle” in physics you have to admit it’s something interesting.
 

What is the God particle? I asked myself and while looking and looking around I found out that the God particle is the missing piece of the Standard Model, which is the name given to the current theory of fundamental particles and also to the way in which they interact with one another.  The part that this God Particle will help us understand in case it is found is the Higgs Boson. The importance of this Higgs Boson in the standard model is that this particle is the one that gives masses thus creating basically everything and this is why it is called the “God Particle”.
 

The search for this Higgs Boson has been going on for quite some time now. Scientists are optimistic about finding and finally seeing and confirming the existence of this Higgs Boson not just so that they can complete the Standard Model, but to finally explain this component of the material world. We could suppose that such huge finding would need some huge funding also, well apparently it cost us approximately 10 billion dollars to build the “LHC” (Large Hadron Collider), which is the world's largest particle accelerator and the one that uses the highest-energy to operate. And then the question was, could this really work?
 

A lot of work was put on the particle accelerator which lies in a tunnel 27 kilometers in circumference, as much as 574 ft beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. A huge effort has been put into completing this experiment and let me tell you that the results will definitely be something to look forward to.
 

What caught my attention about this topic were the supposed consequences of this experiment and the impact that it could have on the world. The one rumor that caught my attention the most was the one that talked about how these particles could create a black whole inside our planet and how it could consume the planet and even our galaxy if something went wrong. Like all, this rumor was later dismissed and physicists pointed out this was a lie and was not possible.
 

Even though there were some information that talked about how the “God Particle” was found, it was later found that apparently all of the information about finding the God Particle was just a case of “The boy who cried wolf” because later on everything that was said about the people who actually “saw” the God Particle was also dismissed by other physicists working at a rival lab. Even though we might not be sure and might not be able to confirm the existence of this so called “God Particle” one thing is for sure, this nickname given by physicists themselves is an example of how religion and science are related with one another and I want to quote, who for me is one of my favorite physicists, Albert Einstein who once said: “A legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist.”  This may explain why the Higgs Boson is given this nickname.
 

This experiment was such huge news to the world that it is almost impossible to not have great expectations about it and this is what makes it so rich in material. On one hand you have possibly one of the greatest findings in human history with also the catchiest nickname and on the other hand you have skeptics, but hey, this is what makes the world go round and like Newton stated in his laws, every action has a reaction. In this case the action being the whole experiment and the reactions being many and many are still yet to come.