• Question: How far are we away from actually discorvering the god particle?

    Asked by adam04mygodwatsgoingon to Ben, Ezzy, Sam on 10 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by jonny1, 08bissonr.
    • Photo: Ben Smart

      Ben Smart answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      Don’t call it the god particle! It’s called the Higgs Boson. (a lot of physicists get rather wound up if you call it the god particle, but that’s just because the particle has nothing to do with God and the name can cause a lot of misconceptions).

      Anyway, how far are we from discovering the Higgs Boson (if it exists at all)? Well I’d say we’re very close. In fact we’re hoping that we’ll either have discovered it or proven it doesn’t exist by the end of the year. We can’t be certain about these dates though, as there is a certain element of chance in it’s discovery or non-discovery.

    • Photo: Sam Vinko

      Sam Vinko answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      Yes, there is a very small region of energy where it could still be hiding so we should know pretty soon if it exists or not. Either way it goes, it would be a fantastic discovery.

    • Photo: Elizabeth Pearson

      Elizabeth Pearson answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      Yeah, I’m with Ben. It’s not called the God particle. That’s just a name made up to sell more books.

      The Higgs Boson, however, is almost certainly confirmed. We just need more time with the LHC to get it up from ‘it looks like it’s pretty much there’ to ‘yes, that is definitly it’.

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