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Particle of energy
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| David R. Hamilton |
Quite a few
people have asked me about the Higgs Boson – or ‘God’ particle, as it’s been
named – that was discovered at CERN recently. They have asked what it is and
what it means for us.
The Higgs
boson is a particle that gives most other particles mass. OK, that might not mean much so let me
explain it a little differently.
You can
actually think of it as a field of energy and that’s an ideal analogy for how I
need to explain what it is.
It’s a bit
like a swimming pool that objects have to pass through. Say you had a steel
ball and a dustbin lid and you had to drag both through the swimming pool.
Which do you think would be easiest? The steel ball, of course! The dustbin lid
would have a much greater drag factor.
The drag
factor is the ‘Mass’ (or weight if that is easier to think about). The swimming
pool is the Higgs field and it exerts a drag on all other particles, which
mostly accounts for the differences in their masses. The Higgs boson might be
thought of as a droplet of water in the swimming pool.
There’s
another way you could think about it. Let’s say you have Usain Bolt, the world
record holder for the 100 metres sprint (9.58 seconds) and a much less famous
sprinter. Usain is much more famous so if the two sprinters walked side by side
through Trafalgar Square in London, Usain would get mobbed by people, slowing
down his walk. The less famous sprinter would walk right through, virtually
unimpeded. You would say that Usain had greater ‘mass’. The people are the
Higgs bosons and they weigh Usain down as they interact with him.
So what
does that mean for you and me?
If it
wasn’t for the Higgs boson most elementary particles (like quarks – that we are
made of) wouldn’t have any mass and we would just be a mish-mash of particles
floating in the universe, devoid of form. You wouldn’t exist, and neither would
the planet Earth or the Sun. It’s kind of why some people call it the ‘God’
particle (although most physicists don’t really like the term).
So for the
ordinary person it doesn’t really change anything. You exist now, partly
because of the Higgs boson just as you did a few days before it was discovered.
Life goes on and you’ll enjoy your morning coffee just as you did before Peter
Higgs even thought up the concept of that particular boson.
It’s absolutely
not the end of physics. There are still many mysteries to be probed. The Higgs
boson could turn out to be not exactly as it was thought and could actually be
made of smaller bits. No one knows yet. It might even by a scientific gateway
that leads physicists into the search for weird new physics and even different
dimensions of space and time. I think it’s all really exciting. It’s the
beginning of something new!
So if you
want to explain to people what the Higgs Boson is, either you can use the simple
descriptions above, or you can cut it down to this simple joke:
A Higgs
boson walks into a church. The priest says, ‘What are you doing in here?’ The
Higgs boson replies, ‘You can’t have mass without me!’
This message was originally posted here.
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"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)
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