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What are the consequences of the United States' failure to invest in science? When John Kennedy said we're going to be on the moon, and he said that very early, he was heehawed in the beginning. But then it came to be true. So there is some value to being scientifically at the top.
-John McLaughlin |
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Peter Higgs is the renowned theoretical physicist largely credited with one of the greatest moments in scientific history. It's what's called the Higgs boson, a type of particle. This astonishing subatomic particle confers mass on matter. It is named after Dr. Peter Higgs, age 83, who predicted that such a particle did exist nearly 50 years ago. This history-making Higgs boson has been described as the God particle because of its centrality to physics and to our existence. The term God particle also conveys the extreme elusiveness of the Higgs boson. To nail it, firms utilized a one-of-a-kind atomic collider, 17 miles in circumference named the Hadron collider, a product of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also called CERN, in Switzerland. The collider created what is described as a collision comparable to the big bang, which brought the universe into existence. In the collision, the Higgs boson appeared for a trillionth of a second. The collider marvel could lead to the discovery of other parallel universes. The collider cost a lot of money, collected by CERN, which is financed by 20 nations. They put together the $9 billion for the Hadron collider and made possible the discovery of the Higgs boson. The U.S. could have discovered the God particle years ago with our own supercollider located in Texas. It would have been three times stronger than the European collider and completed in 1999, almost 14 years ago. But it was canceled in 1993 because the U.S. could not fund the $12 billion for the project. |
