Extreme Sports of Matter: Higgs Announcement Expected July 4

“Can Scientists Just Find the God Particle Already?” That was Gawker’s amusing headline last December when scientists at the nuclear research center CERN reported “tantalizing glimpses” of the Higgs subatomic particle. We have been holding our collective breath ever since, but come July 4th we might be able to exhale. 

CERN is planning an announcement next Wednesday, and exactly what that announcement will be is anyone’s guess. Two teams of scientists have been “blinded” from each other’s analysis of the “most interesting” of over 300 trillion proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider from this year. Amidst the debris from these collisions scientists are seeking out traces of the Higgs particle and its linked energy field.

If the Higgs has been discovered, the Standard Model of physics will be validated, and Nobel Prizes will be handed out. As The Christian Science Monitor points out, the British scientist Peter Higgs, who is now 83 years old and retired, would almost certainly be honored. Higgs first came up with the idea of how the Universe works at the elementary particle level in 1964. 

In the video below, Stephon Alexander, Professor of Physics at Haverford College discusses the implications of the discovery of the Higgs particle:

Watch the video here:

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