Hello @Stephen, @Philip and @Bernard,

Having read your comments on the thread, I would like to make a few corrections on a point or two.

First of all as @Bernard pointed out correctly, the new particle discovered has not yet been proven to be "The" Higgs boson. It has very similar characteristics to it and if you watched the press conference given after the Wednesday seminar, the panelists clearly and very conservatively stated that they will only verify that by the end of the year once they have more data to analyse. There are several Higgs bosons predicted, one is predicted in the Standard Model of Physics which has a spin of zero (I think), the other is predicted in the  super symmetric theory and it has an integer spin of two. They have totally different characteristics and the heads of the ATLAS and CMS experiments estimated that it could take them up to four years to fully observe them.

The other thing is that the term 'god particle' is a metaphor and a bad one at that. What it actually means is the 'godamn particle' since it is the most elusive elementary particle to date. This has nothing to do with theistic orientatitions and its main purpose it to explain the origins of mass in the Universe. The name was simply chosen for the sake of giving credit to the man who did the theoretical work behind its discovery. In the scientific circle it is preferrably referred to as the BEH scalar particle after Robert Brout, Fracois Englert and Peter Higgs all who independently worked on the theory.

Finally, the implications of the discovery are not immediately obvious. More knowledgeable people, some of who have worked on the LHC for many years have given their comments. Watch the short videos if interested, they are very informative. One speculation that I found appealing is that once we get a better understanding of how matter obtains mass, we could find ways of blocking the Higgs' field from affecting some substances and therefore produce massless materials, maybe enabling travel at light speeds(??).

Martin.

On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Philip Musyoki <pmusyoki@gmail.com> wrote:
@Ndungu,

We at the religious community are overly excited by the discovery of Higgs Boson, know as the 'God's Particle.' This unequivocally proves the existence of God.

We would like to encourage our scientific brothers to repent, for the end is near.


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