The God Particle

First proposed by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs in 1964, the Higgs boson particle or “God particle,” comprises a fundamental building block within the Standard Model of particle physics, which supports the concept that everything in the visible Universe is built around a family of seventeen particles of varying size and characteristics, including twelve fermion and five boson particles, which encompasses lesser known particles such as charm quarks, tau neutrinos, hadrons and gluons. Just as photons interact with electromagnetic fields in the phenomenon of electromagnetism, other particles within the Standard Model interact with the Higgs field, which gives all visible objects in the Universe their mass.

Breakthrough Discovery

In one of the most compelling discoveries in modern physics, in July of 2012, scientists at the CERN Large Hadron Collider near Geneva Switzerland—the world’s most powerful particle accelerator—officially announced their confirmation of the existence of the God particle. In an effort to recreate conditions similar to those immediately after the Big Bang, scientists generated high energy collisions between photons, and since Higgs boson particles decay almost instantly after they collide, physicists employed massive amounts of data analysis, which looked for the God particle’s existence through the study of its decaying byproducts such as pairs of Z and W bosons.

An Unseen Majority

To add complexity to our current understanding within theoretical physics, by studying such things as the movement of galaxies, scientists have proposed that what we can observe with the naked eye or through Universe imaging tools such as the James Webb Space telescope, Higgs boson-generated matter makes up only five percent of the known Universe, leaving the remaining 95 percent as yet unseen or undetected ghost particles, which in turn lays in wait for a breakthrough and subsequent new theory within the study of physics. According to our current understanding, the remaining 95% of ghost particles are made up of antimatter or dark matter, dark energy and degenerate matter, collectively thought to be phantom doppelgängers of the seventeen particles that make up the Standard Model, making the God particle, an integral component within man’s increasing understanding of the Universe we live in.