GENEVA (Agence France-Presse) — British scientist Peter Higgs, whose work is the cornerstone of modern physics, said yesterday he is putting champagne on ice in the hope a new experiment confirms his theories on how the universe works.
Mr. Higgs, a veteran professor at Edinburgh University, told journalists he hopes a vast experiment in the tunnels deep underground at the CERN laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border could prove the existence of an elusive and unstable particle to which he has lent his name.
The so-called “Higgs Boson” has been dubbed the “God Particle” because so many have searched for it but no one has seen it, despite Mr. Higgs using scientific deductions to claim its existence as far back as 1964.
Now the white-haired scientist hopes to be vindicated in time for his 80th birthday on May 29, 2009.
The thousands of scientists who work at CERN have spent years preparing for the experiment that will deploy the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — essentially the world’s biggest atom smasher — in a bid to recreate the conditions of the ’Big Bang,’ when the universe is believed to have been created.
The LHC will speed protons to 99.9999 percent of the speed of light in two parallel beams in a ring-shaped tunnel 16.9 miles long and up to 568 feet below ground.
In top gear, the LHC will generate nearly a billion collisions per second. Above ground, a collection of 3,000 computers will instantly isolate about 100 collisions that are of the most interest.
If the LHC identifies the Higgs Boson, it would fill a huge gap in the so-called Standard Model, the theory that summarizes present knowledge of particle physics. The Higgs Boson would help explain the origin of mass and why some particles in the Standard Model have it but others do not.
“I shall open a bottle of something,” should the particle be proved to exist, the professor said.
“It will be champagne — whiskey takes a little more time to drink,” he added.
A gamble costing $5.9 billion that has harnessed the labors of more than 2,000 physicists from nearly three-dozen countries, the LHC is the biggest, most powerful high-energy particle accelerator ever built.
“I should be very, very puzzled” if the LHC does not prove the existence of the Higgs Boson, Mr. Higgs said.
The team at CERN is not the only one hunting for the Higgs Boson. A rival team based at Fermilab in Chicago is in hot pursuit, using an aging accelerator known as the Tevatron, which is to be phased out in 2010.
“It’s a possibility that they find it first,” Mr. Higgs said.
“It’s hard for them to find it, but it could be already in their data but not in their analysis yet,” he added.
The competition is fierce but not cut-throat — the United States and Fermilab itself are enthusiastic partners in the LHC.
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