Brother Guy Consolmagno, a researcher and spokesman at the Vatican Observatory, has described the probable finding of the Higgs boson particle, the so called “god particle”, as an important achievement. While it has no direct bearing on theology or revelation, the scientific discovery hailed by some as the “god particle” is an important achievement, Br Guy says.
“The fact that we see this harmony in nature, like the harmony that is in the Higgs particle, the fact that we now have a mechanism and a particle that is able to explain how to give mass to other particles, is not against the fact that there is a benevolent God who created the Universe,” said Gionti. Listen to interview
The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs who, along with others, proposed its existence in 1964. The existence of the Higgs boson and the associated Higgs field would be the simplest known method to explain why certain other elementary particles have mass. In this theory, an unseen field permeates all of space; various other elementary particles obtain mass when they interact with it.
“God particle” is the name physicist and author Leon Lederman gave to the Higgs boson in his book “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?” It’s meant to communicate the importance of the particle to the understanding of physics; Lederman has also said that he settled for the “God Particle” because the publisher rejected his intended title, “the Goddamn Particle”. Higgs, himself an atheist, does not agree with the “god particle” nickname as it “might offend people who are religious”.
One of the primary goals of the Large Hadron Collider (“LHC”) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland—one of the most complicated scientific instruments ever built—was to test the existence of the Higgs boson and measure its properties which would allow physicists to confirm this cornerstone of modern theory.
Source
- CNA
- Vatican Radio
- Wikipedia
- gawker
- Image: The Atlantic