World’s biggest appliance helps discover the God particle
July 5th, 2012
The scientists who press the Large Hadron Colliders’s (LHC) buttons have yesterday announced the (potential) discovery of the Higgs boson – the most wanted particle in physics.
Named after Professor Peter Higgs, the Higgs boson is thought to give all other particles mass, be everywhere at once and frustratingly difficult to pin down, thus its nickname, the God particle.
The LHC is a large machine designed to accomplish a specific task; broadly speaking, the LHC is an appliance! The giant appliance smashes atoms against each other in the hope of manifesting the fleeting Higgs boson and to record its creation and decay.
Located at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland the appliance has been made for a series of experiments scientists hope will help to better explain the nature of the universe.
The appliance is more specifically described as a high energy particle accelerator. It is a 27-kilometre long, circular tunnel lying up to 175 metres underground across the Swiss-Franco border.
According to a report by the BBC the discovery could help scientists figure out 96 per cent of the so far imperceivable universe, which is made up of mysterious dark matter and dark energy.
Yesterdays announcement has been hailed as one of the most significant scientific discoveries of the century, on par with the Apollo Moon mission in the 1960s.
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