Earth & Sky

Scientists search for “God particle”

The Helix Nebula, known as the 'eye of God'

Later this year, scientists will take the first steps to create energies reminiscent of a time nanoseconds after the Big Bang.

The energies will come from the smashing together of protons, the stuff of atoms, as they’re whirled to near light speed with the biggest instrument of science ever constructed. It’s called the Large Hadron Collider, a particle physics laboratory run by CERN – the European Organization for Nuclear Research – in Switzerland. Albert De Roeck is a research scientist at CERN.

Albert De Roeck: What we are hunting for is fundamental knowledge to try to understand what the universe is made of, where we come from, what our place is in the universe.

Among other things, scientists hope to use the Large Hadron Collider to find an as-yet-unseen particle – known to scientists as a Higgs boson – nicknamed the “God particle.”

Albert De Roeck: We have a very good theory, which is called the standard model, which describes all we see to date. But it assumes that such a particle, or such a mechanism, exists.

That’s because – without this elusive particle – mass shouldn’t exist in the physical universe. In other words, matter as we know it, shouldn’t exist. It clearly does exist, and – in theory – the elusive “God particle” explains why. That’s why it’s so interesting. And it’s why scientists are searching for it.

Our thanks today to Research Corporation, a foundation for the advancement of science. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.

Written by Jorge Salazar