Unlocking The Universe’s Mysteries

Physicists said yesterday that the potential discovery of the ‘God particle’ was a gateway to a new era that could see humanity unlock some of the universe’s great mysteries in- cluding dark matter. The long-sought Higgs boson is an elusive particle thought to help explain why matter has mass.A timeline of particle physics:

• 5th century BC: Greek phi- losopher Democritus suggests the Universe consists of empty space and of invisible and indivisible particles called atoms.• 1802: John Dalton, a Quaker-edu- cated English physicist and chemist, lays groundwork of modern theory of the elements and the atom.• 1897: Electron discovered by Britain’s Joseph Thomson, who later proposes a ‘plum pudding’ model of the atom. He suggests the atom is a slightly positive sphere with raisin-like electrons inside that have a negative charge.• 1899-1919: New Zealand physi- cist Ernest Rutherford identifies atomic nucleus, the proton and alpha and beta particles.• 1920s: Advances in quantum theory, about the behaviour of matter at the atomic level.• 1932: Neutron, similar to the proton but with no electrical charge, is discovered by James Chadwick of Britain. The first antiparticle, the positron (the mirror particle to the electron), is discovered by American Carl Anderson.• 1934: Italy’s Enrico Fermi pos- tulates the existence of the neutrino (Italian for “little neutral one”), a neutral-charge partner to the electron. Theory is confirmed in 1959.• 1950s: Invention of particle ac- celerator leads to surge in discoveries of sub-atomic particles.• 1964: British physicist Peter Higgs postulates existence of a parti- cle, later known as the Higgs boson, that provides mass to otherwise mass-less particles; Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig of the United States propose that protons and neutrons are comprised of quarks.• 1974: Development of the ‘Standard Model’, a theory that eve- rything in the Universe comprises 12 building blocks divided into two families, leptons and quarks, and these are governed by four funda- mental forces.• 1977-2000: Flurry of discover- ies that strengthens Standard Model hypothesis, including the existence of bottom and top quarks, tau lepton, gluon, tau neutrino and the W and Z bosons which help carry the ‘weak’ force.• 2008: The European Organisa- tion for Nuclear Research (CERN) starts up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest particle physics lab.• July 4 2012: CERN announces it has discovered a new particle consist- ent with the Higgs. – Nampa-AFP

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