What is Higgs boson – and will CERN scientists find the 'God particle'?

The Higgs boson, however, only exists at high energies - and only lasts for fractions of a second, then decays into other particles. Scientists will be looking for trace patterns of decay that indicate the Higgs has made an appearance.

Einstein famously said E = mc². If CERN scientists can accelerate particles to the speed of light, they will observe the highest recorded energies, which should allow a look at the Higgs boson.

Back in 2001, CERN's Large Electron Positron (LEP), the precursor to the LHC, found what it believed to be evidence of the elusive particle. Without conclusive data, however, CERN scientists worried the Fermilab collider in the US, just outside Chicago, would observe the particle first. Fermilab got close, but no quantum cigar.

Will the Higgs boson allow time travel?

The Higgs boson itself won’t allow time travel. But the LHC may, say some scientists.

Remember String Theory, the contending grand theory of the universe? It claims that the world is made of tiny vibrating strings. It also claims that there exist 10 dimensions to space time (we currently observe only four: think of a point, a square, a box, and time).

If true, then the LHC may create the high-energy environments that enable particles to jump in and out of these six hidden dimensions.

A recent essay in The New York Times suggests that the Higgs boson itself may be using time travel to prevent itself from being discovered: hence all the delays at Fermilab and CERN.

A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

What does this have to do with God?

Leon Lederman, the 1988 Nobel prize winner in physics and former director of Fermilab, coined the phrase “the God particle” for the Higgs boson because it would explain what gives nature's fundamental particles mass. But Mr. Lederman wasn't religious. He also famously joked: "Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money."

When Moses saw God, according to the Bible’s Book of Numbers, his face was radiant for days. Scientists at CERN eagerly await their own sighting of the so-called God particle.

"Imagine a house with a lot of children on Christmas Eve, and you've pretty much captured the mood," Thomas LeCompte told the Monitor in an email exchange from the lab in Geneva.

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