“God particle” wins Nobel Prize for two scientists

The Higgs Boson which was discovered by the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland last year has won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the theorists who initially proposed its existence about 50 years ago.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Peter Higgs and Francois Englert with the Nobel Prize in Physics today. The 84 year old Peter Higgs is an emeritus professor of theoretical physics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland while the 80 year old Francois Englert is also an emeritus professor at the University of Brussels, Belgium.

Englert (left) and Higgs in 2012. Img: AFP/Getty

They both published independent papers in 1964 giving details about how objects are able to gain mass with the mass being determined by the number of Higgs Bosons attached them. The Higgs Boson was nicknamed the “God particle”.

Englert published his paper with Robert Brout who died in 2011. Other scientists published their works on the particle. Three scientists; Gerald Guralnik, Tom Kibble and Carl Hagen also worked on it but Nobel Prize rules doesn’t allow more than three recipients for any prize category.

The two scientists only met for the first time last year despite publishing similar works since 1964. “The first time I saw him was at the Fourth of July conference at CERN [in 2012],” Englert revealed at a news conference through a phone call.

Higgs could not be reached to inform him of his Nobel laureate. According to friends he gave himself a break for a few days and doesn’t have a mobile phone with him. He is expected to be back home by Friday.

The theorists have claimed that this theory explains object have different masses because of the amount of Higgs Bosons attached to them. Particles would attract a varying number of Higgs Bosons and the more a particle attracts, the bigger its mass.

The particle is invisible though and it is claimed that without these particles in the universe, every object would have been moving at the speed of light.

“It has consequences. If it wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be here.” Higgs once told Guardian newspaper. Obviously the world would not be a possibility without this theory. This theory is one of the theories that define how the world is constructed.

The amount awarded for the Prize win in each category is $1.2 million which will be shared by the two recipients. The Nobel Prize was started by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor who invented Dynamite in 1895 to honour remarkable works in physics, chemistry, literature and peace.

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