1. What is Standard model?
  2. What is Higgs Boson particle?
  3. Big Bang and universe Formation
  4. What is CERN?
  5. How do they find God particle?
  6. Why waste money on a stupid experiment?
  7. Who is Bose?

What is Standard model?

  • The standard model is a theory of Particle Physics.
  • It says all the material around us is made up of 12 matter particle (also known as Fermions).
  • The other 11 particles predicted by the model have been found and only Higgs particle was not yet found, so the CERN was trying to find it.

What is Higgs Boson particle?

  • This particle is theoretically responsible for mass, without which there would be no gravity and no universe.
  • Therefore it is also called the “God” particle.
  • The Higgs particle was proposed in the 1960s by British physicist Peter Higgs as a way of explaining why other particles have mass.
  • CERN has been attempting to find evidence of its existence.

Big Bang and universe Formation

  • The Big Bang occurred approximately 13.75 billion years ago, and it is responsible for the creation of the Universe.
  • But after the Big Bang, the universe was a gigantic soup of particles racing around at the speed of light without any mass to speak of.
  • It was through their interaction with the Higgs field that they gained mass and eventually formed the universe.
  • Thus finding the Higgs particle can throw more light on how universe was formed.

What is CERN?

  • The European Organization for Nuclear Research also known as CERN
  • It is the world’s largest nuclear physics laboratory carrying out various experiments,
  • It is situated at Geneva, along France-Swiss border.
  • It has been operating several particle accelerators the latest one being the Large Hadron collider.

How do they find God particle?

  • They use the Large Hadron Collider.
  • It is the world’s biggest and most powerful particle accelerator
  •  Two beams of protons are fired in opposite directions around it before smashing into each other to create many millions of particle collisions every second in a recreation of the conditions a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, when the Higgs field is believed to have ‘switched on’ and did the magic.

Why waste money on a stupid experiment?

  • Yep, some Jholachhap leftist from JNU might say why waste so much money and electricity finding this elusive “God” particle, while millions of people die in poverty and starvation in India and Africa?
  • Well, It is not hard to show that expenditure on basic science often leads to discoveries of enormous economic and practical importance.
  • For example,
  • discovery of the nucleus = led to nuclear power stations, that provide clean energy.
  • Only through the discovery of electromagnetic waves = mobile communication became possible.
  • Only after Faraday  gave the laws of induction, we could invent the motors, and one of them is currently rotating the fan inside your Computer cabinet to cool your CPU.
  • So only God can imagine at this point, what inventions will follow once the “God” particle is thoroughly studied and how it’ll benefit the mankind.

Who is Bose?

  • The work done by Bose and Albert Einstein laid the foundation for the discovery of the God particle.
  • The sub-atomic particle “boson” is named after Bengali physicist Satyendra Nath Bose whose pioneering work in the field in the early 1920s changed the way particle physics has been studied.
  • He was awarded India’s second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in by the Government of India.
  • What makes totally awesome- he never received a Ph.D, nor was he awarded a Nobel Prize, though the Nobel committee recognised other scientists for research related to concepts he developed.

Archana Sharma

(may be for random 2 markers)

  • a scientist of Indian origin, working at CERN involved in CMS experiment over there. She has been involved in this since 1987.

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