Tuesday, November 29, 2005

The God Particle

This is just something for you to read while waiting for our next post (if it will ever come). This God Particle is called the Higgs-Boson particle. It is a hypothetical particle that is said to be the reason why stuff acquires mass. Mass is basically a resistance to change in motion, or as some may call it, inertia. When reading the articles, I was reminded of the old theory of space being filled with a substance called ether, which was made up to try and explain how light and other electromagnetic energy could propagate through the apparent vacuum of space. It also reminded me of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the Cassini effect, where a measurable force occurs between two metal plates due to particles and anti-particles suddenly appearing and annihilating each other randomly. This could be seen as analogous to this "ether" substance. (Mr. Choy should have something to say about this, as he is more learned in electromagnetic propagation and wave theory than me).

A good read, thanks to some physicists who came up with short and simple explanations.

http://www.phy.uct.ac.za/courses/phy400w/particle/higgs.htm

Ruben