What is the "God Particle"? - WMDT 47 News - Delmarva's Choice

What is the "God Particle"?

WMDT 47 NEWS - Scientists at CERN believe they have found a fundamental building block of our universe, the elusive "Higgs Boson." It's also called the "God particle," but what exactly is this?

Well the Detroit Free Press explains it like this:

"School physics teaches that everything is made up of atoms, and inside atoms are electrons, protons and neutrons. They, in turn, are made of quarks and other subatomic particles. Scientists long have puzzled over how these minute building blocks of the universe acquire mass.

"One theory proposed by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and teams in Belgium and the U.S. in the 1960s is that a new particle must be creating a sticky field that acts as a drag on other particles. The atom-smashing experiments at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, have now captured a glimpse of what appears to be just such a Higgs-like particle."

Scientists say this is important step in finding out how the world came into being. Today's announcement is just a preliminary result. But scientists say it is "very strong."

It appears there are no direct practical results from the discovery. But experts say the massive scientific effort to find this particle, led to other discoveries, like the creation of the World Wide Web, as well as advances in solar energy capture and medical imaging.