The God Damn Particle
The Higgs boson is a particle so important to science that it’s been dubbed “the God particle” – may come out of hiding in 2011. It is believed to be so fundamental to give mass to all particles, has been theorized since 1964 but never detected.
Laws of nature, known as the Standard Model, describes three types of forces: electromagnetic interactions, which cause all phenomena associated with electric and magnetic fields and the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation; strong interactions, which bind atomic nuclei; and the weak nuclear force, which governs beta decay–a form of natural radioactivity–and hydrogen fusion, the source of the sun’s energy. (The Standard Model does not describe the fourth force, gravity.)
The Higgs particle is connected with the weak force.
Following discovery is also expected in year 2011.
Gliese 581g, one of six worlds orbiting a star in the constellation Libra, was announced as the first Earth-like planet where life might exist. While Vogt stands by the discovery, some science groups question the finding. For instance, a group of astronomers, led by Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, performed a follow-up investigation in an attempt to confirm the existence of Gliese 581g and said they were unable to.
Even with Mayor’s team and Vogt’s team trying to confirm Gliese 581g, “it may take another season or two to really know, so I expect we won’t see any possible confirmation (or refutation) for another year or two,” Vogt said. “In the meantime, we are hard at work not only gathering more data on this system, but on others that may yield similar potentially habitable planets.”
The Kepler mission, which launched in spring 2009 and whose goal is to search for Earth-like worlds, hasn’t been under way long enough to confirm habitable Earth-like exoplanets, Vogt said. (Source: http://fxn.ws/hBWzoi )
Would this other earth be as greedy and as violent as this one? I hope not. Otherwise the discovery would be a waste.
Let’s see who discovers whom and how many discover themselves. Amen!