His contribution is one of the most important of the time: the Higgs boson. His death brings us to the present day the relevance of his discovery. Who was Peter Higgs, the discoverer of “the God particle”?
«I didn’t enjoy the name. But she recognized that this allowed her to reach a broader audience. This is what Dr. Saúl Noé Ramos Sánchez, researcher at the UNAM Physics Institute, says. He says that the physicist wanted to name the particle
as the “damned by God” (Goddamn particle).
Nobel Prize
Ramos Sánchez proposes an approach to understand the concept of the boson and the Higgs field. We must imagine a pool in which the particles move and get “soaked.” That liquid with which the particles are impregnated is what allows them to acquire their mass. This is how they acquire the characteristics that we can perceive in the environment.
Higgs’ contribution influenced the way we understand the universe. The scientist presented his theory of the Higgs boson in the 1960s. But only in 2013 did he receive the Nobel Prize. A year earlier, the European Organization for Nuclear Research verified the existence of the boson.
«In 2012, what was reported was a particle that closely coincided with what Higgs had predicted. That’s why they gave him the award,” says Ramos Sánchez. This achievement was possible thanks to the Large Hadron Collider. It is the largest particle accelerator in the world. It consists of a circle-shaped tunnel, with a circumference of around 27 kilometers.
The beginning of the universe
Its function is to accelerate particles at high speed and can even cause them to collide. Recreates the beginning of the universe at a subatomic level. When the discovery of the “God particle” was announced, Higgs burst into tears. “It’s a really incredible thing for me to be alive to see this,” he said.
The discoverer of “the God particle” was born in the city of Newcastle in 1929. He graduated with honors in Physics from King’s College. Later, he received his doctorate with a thesis titled “Some problems in the theory of molecular vibrations.”
He concluded his academic career by retiring as an emeritus professor from the University of Edinburgh.
