6.59 PM Friday, 29 March 2024
  • City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
  • Dubai 04:56 06:10 12:26 15:53 18:37 19:52
29 March 2024

'God particle' scientists win Nobel Physics Prize

Didier Viviers, rector of the ULB University and ULB emeritus professor Francois Englert attend a press conference of Belgian theoretical physicist Francois Englert after winning the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics, on October 8, 2013 at the ULB Universite Libre de Bruxelles (Frenchspeaking Free University of Brussels), in Brussels. Englert and his colleague Peter Higgs received this year's Nobel Prize for their research on the Brout/Englert/Higgs mechanism also known as Higgs Boson at Geneva's CERN particle accelerator. (AFP)

Published
By AFP

Peter Higgs of Britain and Francois Englert of Belgium won the Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for conceiving of the so-called "God particle" which confers mass.

Higgs, 84, and Englert, 80, were honoured for theorising a particle -- discovered last year after an agonising quest -- that explains why the Universe has any substance at all.

"This particle originates from an invisible field that fills up all space. Even when the Universe seems empty this field is there," the jury said in a statement.

"Without it, we would not exist, because it is from contact with the field that particles acquire mass."

Shortly after the announcement, the University of Edinburgh posted a statement from Higgs saying he was "overwhelmed" by the honour.

"I would also like to congratulate all those who have contributed to the discovery of this new particle," Higgs said.

"I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research."

Englert told AFP in a brief comment: "I'm very happy to have received the prize."

Known as a boson, the discovery was popularly dubbed the "God Particle" on the grounds that it is everywhere yet bafflingly elusive.

Without it, say theorists, we and all the other joined-up atoms in the Universe would not exist.

The presumed particle was discovered last year by a mega-scale physics lab near Geneva operated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), after a decades-long search.

"As an achievement, it ranks alongside the confirmation that the Earth is round or Man's first steps on the Moon," Canadian particle physicist Pauline Gagnon told AFP.

Higgs and Englert, the latter of the Free University of Brussels, received the world's most prestigious award for excellence in physics nearly a half century after they and others set down the theoretical groundwork.

The history of the discovery dates back to 1964, when six physicists, working independently in three groups, published a flurry of papers.

The first were Belgians Robert Brout, who died in 2011, and Englert, who proposed a mechanism by which a mass-giving field of particles invaded the early Universe, which until then was filled only with massless particles.

This was followed by Higgs, who was the first to suggest that mass could only occur through the existence of a hitherto unknown particle.

Because of this, the particle has been named after him, although Higgs has always been swift to acknowledge vital contributions from others.

At the heart of the search for the "Higgs," was a drive to fill the so-called Standard Model, a conceptual framework of the fundamental particles of matter.

The model, designed in the 1970s, failed to explain why some particles have substance, and others, such as light, have none.

The answer, according to the theories, lies in an invisible field of bosons, or force carriers, that was created after the Big Bang.

Fundamental particles travel through this field. Some interact with the Higgs to a greater or lesser degree, which thus confers mass, while others do not.

On July 4 last year, physicists at CERN announced to rousing applause that they had found an elementary particle "consistent with" the Higgs boson.

CERN Director General Rolf Heuer, in a statement on Tuesday, gave the biggest sign yet that the presumed particle is indeed the right one.

"The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN last year, which validates the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism, marks the culmination of decades of intellectual effort by many people around the world," he said.

Later he told staff at CERN that it was "a great day for particle physics", assuring his co-workers that they, too, deserved praise: "I'm really proud of you guys."

The London-based Institute of Physics, where Higgs is an honorary fellow, hailed the work on the Higgs boson, saying it had led to a very exciting and productive period in physics research.

"It has been a long journey but one that has inspired a generation to engage with the subject," said Frances Saunders, president of the institute.

"With the existence of the Higgs boson confirmed... we can now move on to the next challenges to our understanding such as the phenomena of dark matter and quantum gravity."

In line with tradition, the laureates will receive their prize at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.

The pair will share the prize sum of eight million Swedish kronor ($1.25 million, 925,000 euros), reduced because of the economic crisis last year from the 10 million kronor awarded since 2001.

Higgs and Englert: men behind the 'God particle'

For someone who helped unleash the first great scientific discovery of the 21st century, Britain's Peter Higgs is a remarkably low-tech man.

The newly-minted co-laureate of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics has no mobile phone, no television and no Internet access in his modest flat.

Yet it is the name of this shy and unassuming 84-year-old that will be carried down the ages.

For generations to come, it will be mentioned in textbooks and honoured in scientific eulogies alongside heroes of physics such as Albert Einstein and Max Planck.

Ground-breaking theoretical work that helped explain how the Universe has mass earned Higgs and Belgian physicist Francois Englert this year's Nobel.

The accolade comes almost half a century after Higgs had his "eureka" moment, realising as a young lecturer in Edinburgh there could be a field of novel particles that confers mass.

Without the "Higgs," say theorists, we and all the other connected atoms in the Universe would not exist.

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, in northeastern England, Higgs holds a PhD from King's College in London.

He lives quietly in the Scottish capital, where he is emeritus professor of theoretical physics, and is said to cringe every time his discovery is referred to as the "Higgs" boson, studiously avoiding the term himself.

As an atheist, he becomes even more agitated when the boson is dubbed the "God particle".

"He is a very mild-mannered and very gentle man, but he actually does get a little tenacious if you say something wrong that (has to do with) physics," Alan Walker, a fellow physicist at Edinburgh and a close friend of Higgs, has said.

The Sunday Times newspaper reported that Higgs had been in a "fragile state" this week, having fallen outside his apartment a week ago and had decided to go away for a few days to avoid all the publicity.

Recognition for Higgs and Englert came in July 2012 when the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva said it had found a subatomic particle "consistent" with the long-sought boson.

"It's very nice to be right sometimes," Higgs said that day. "It has certainly been a long wait."

By Higgs' side, in tears, sat Englert, who with fellow Belgian Robert Brout -- who died in 2011 -- challenged convention with radical ideas about how mass is conferred.

Englert, a bearded, bespectacled and snappily-dressed 80-year-old, is emeritus professor at the Free University of Brussels (ULB).

He and Brout set down the conceptual ground work for Higgs and others to build on. The pair proposed that the newborn Universe was at first filled with massless particles but was then pervaded by a field of particles which endowed them with mass.

In an interview posted on the university's website, Englert said that he and Brout became interested in cosmology "in order to avoid being pigeon-holed by specialisation".

"It's not necessary to have read everything about a particular subject in order to get interested in it. The main thing is to sort out what's important and what is peripheral in order to be able to dive in."

Englert recalled the excitement he felt in 1964 as Brout and he put their theory together.

"We suddenly understood that our theory was flawless, from the viewpoint of logic."

Higgs and Englert have won a slew of honours. They co-won the 2004 Wolf Prize, another top physics award, and Englert was named a baron by Belgium's King Albert II in July.