Scientists may have found 'God particle'

2012-07-09 17:41

分享到

 

Get Flash Player

Download

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

This week, scientists in Switzerland reported a big discovery about a very small particle. They think they have finally found a Higgs boson, or what some people call the "God particle." It could answer some basic questions about the universe and the creation of planets and life. Rolf Heuer is the director-general of CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research.

ROLF HEUER: "I think we have a success today. We have a discovery. We have discovered a new particle, a boson -- most probably a Higgs boson, but we have to find out which kind of Higgs boson this is. Does it have the properties which we expect from the Standard Model? If not, what are its properties and where do they point to?"

In particle physics, the Standard Model is sometimes called "a theory of almost everything" that affects how subatomic particles interact and affect each other. Subatomic means smaller than an atom.

Scientists may have found 'God particle'

Scientists believe the Higgs boson could explain how matter gets its mass. Mass is the amount of material in an object that gives it weight in the presence of gravity.

The subatomic particle that scientists have found fits the description of the Higgs boson predicted by physicist Peter Higgs. Scientists have been searching for it for 45 years. Peter Higgs attended the event at CERN on Wednesday but did not want to say much about the findings.

PETER HIGGS: "I think it is not appropriate for me to answer any detailed questions at this stage. This is an occasion celebrating an experimental achievement, and I should congratulate the people involved."

Theorists believe the Higgs boson existed only during the first millionth of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang. That was the huge explosion when the universe was created more than 13 billions years ago. Physicists at CERN are trying to recreate the high energies that existed at the time of the Big Bang.

CERN has the world's biggest atom-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider. This ten-billion-dollar collider produces high-energy crashes to investigate mysteries like dark matter and the creation of the universe. The results presented Wednesday are based on findings collected last year and this year from two experiments, called Atlas and CMS.

The scientists involved say more research must be done to be sure of their results. However, a spokesman for one of the experiment teams, Joe Incandela, says the boson is unlike any particle found so far.

JOE INCANDELA: "We are reaching into the fabric of the universe at a level we have never done before. This is telling us something. It is key to the structure of the universe. We are on the frontier now. We are at the edge of a new exploration and this could open up -- maybe we see nothing extraordinary, and we understand that maybe this is the only part of the story that is left. Or maybe we open up a whole new realm of discovery."

CERN had been planning to shut down its atom-smasher for two years for maintenance work. But because of these results, it will keep the Large Hadron Collider in service for another two to three months.

About 200 people gathered at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States at two o'clock in the morning to watch the announcement from Geneva. Fermilab's Robert Roser points out the scientists at CERN were careful to say they found a "Higgs-like" object.

ROBERT ROSER: "It's a subtle difference and so what they will do over the course of the many years, they will start to investigate all of its properties to see if it acts, if it smells, tastes, and behaves the way they expect it to."

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.

Related stories:

“上帝粒子”疑被发现

英物理学家确信“上帝粒子”即将现身

Scientists create first genetically engineered monkeys

Will physicists have to rewrite the special theory of relativity?

(来源:VOA 编辑:旭燕)

 

分享到

中国日报网英语点津版权说明:凡注明来源为“中国日报网英语点津:XXX(署名)”的原创作品,除与中国日报网签署英语点津内容授权协议的网站外,其他任何网站或单位未经允许不得非法盗链、转载和使用,违者必究。如需使用,请与010-84883561联系;凡本网注明“来源:XXX(非英语点津)”的作品,均转载自其它媒体,目的在于传播更多信息,其他媒体如需转载,请与稿件来源方联系,如产生任何问题与本网无关;本网所发布的歌曲、电影片段,版权归原作者所有,仅供学习与研究,如果侵权,请提供版权证明,以便尽快删除。

中国日报网双语新闻

扫描左侧二维码

添加Chinadaily_Mobile
你想看的我们这儿都有!

中国日报双语手机报

点击左侧图标查看订阅方式

中国首份双语手机报
学英语看资讯一个都不能少!

关注和订阅

本文相关阅读
人气排行
热搜词
 
 
精华栏目
 

阅读

词汇

视听

翻译

口语

合作

 

关于我们 | 联系方式 | 招聘信息

Copyright by chinadaily.com.cn. All rights reserved. None of this material may be used for any commercial or public use. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. 版权声明:本网站所刊登的中国日报网英语点津内容,版权属中国日报网所有,未经协议授权,禁止下载使用。 欢迎愿意与本网站合作的单位或个人与我们联系。

电话:8610-84883645

传真:8610-84883500

Email: languagetips@chinadaily.com.cn