Finding Higgs boson: A triumph of human curiosity
The announcement last week of the first definitive evidence of a new particle, likely the long-awaited Higgs boson, has a lot to teach us — and not all of it is about science. It took an international team funded by the global community of taxpayers to bring it about.
To be sure the science is extremely exciting. The Higgs was first proposed in the 1960s and is thought to be the remnant of a ubiquitous interaction common to all objects with mass. As lofty and ethereal as these ideas are, the Higgs discovery, as with all scientific discoveries, is solidly grounded in concrete, observable phenomena.… Seguir leyendo »