alienation news

Hunt for the God particle heats up

The Higgs boson -- so hard to find that it has been ironically dubbed "the God particle" -- is one of the greatest prizes in modern physics.
The confirmation or otherwise of the theoretical sub-atomic particle called the Higgs boson -- is back up for grabs.
In a friendly but intense rivalry, European and US scientists have been going head-to-head to find the particle that will either confirm or wreck our concept of the physical universe.
The elusive particle (if it actually exists) was named after a Scottish physicist, Peter Higgs. He puzzled over the so-called Standard Model of physics, a century-old bestiary headed by the atom and which reaches down to progressively tinier and more exotically named sub-particles such as muons, quarks and stranges.