Particle physics -- why does it matter?
Thursday, July 5, 2012 - 07:01
in Physics & Chemistry
Scientists reported yesterday the discovery of a particle that is very likely the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that gives other particles massand makes life possible. Theorized in the 1960s and sometimes called the God particle, physicists have spent decades searching for it. What finally allowed them to find it were experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a high-energy particle accelerator that runs in a 27-kilmometre circular tunnel buried 100 metres below the surface of the earth underneath France and Switzerland.