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Large Hadron Collider was in news recently for doing some scientific research to prove the presence of an elementary particle. The scientist who predicted this particle in 1964 has been aw&rded Nobel Prize in 201 3. What is this discovery ?
Explanation
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN was instrumental in the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle often referred to as the 'God Particle' [1]. This particle is associated with the Higgs field, which permeates the universe and explains how fundamental particles, such as electrons and quarks, acquire mass through their interactions with it [3]. The existence of this particle was theoretically predicted in 1964 by Peter Higgs and François Englert [2]. Following the experimental confirmation of the particle's properties at the LHC, Higgs and Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013 [1]. The discovery completed the Standard Model of particle physics by providing a fundamental theory for the origin of mass in subatomic particles.
Sources
- [1] https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsthe-higgs-boson
- [3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01103-7
- [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4247396/