HIGGS BOSON PARTICLE - A FIVE SIGMA WONDER DISCOVERY - WHAT INDIA CAN DO?

THE HIGGS BOSON PARTICLE

A FIVE SIGMA WONDER DISCOVERY

 FOR

EXTENDING HUMAN FRONTIERS

WHAT INDIA CAN DO?

Physicists all over the world, especially those at CERN Research Centre, are extremely joyful at the discovery of a New Sub (or Sub-Sub) atomic particle, which, according to their thinking and reasoning, is the Higgs Boson Particle. Whether it is the HIGGS BOSON particle or a new, yet unnamed particle, its discovery is a very significant scientific discovery.  

The sheer scale of scientific Investigation and the accuracy thereof are extremely commendable. This discovery will no doubt be followed up with further investigations – to know more about the particle – which they believe is the key element in shaping an orderly Universe.

Here are some details of this discovery :

Ø  Scientists at Europe's CERN research centre have found this new subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe, which appears to be the boson imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs.

Ø  CERN uses a giant underground laboratory - the Large Hadron Collider –outside Geneva -  to search for the particle. Protons are smashed together at nearly the speed of light, yielding sub-atomic debris which is then scrutinized for signs of the fleeting Higgs.

Ø  CERN's Hadron Collider is the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator. Two beams of protons are fired in opposite directions around the 27-km looped pipe built under the Swiss-French border before smashing into each other.

Ø  The task is arduous - as there are trillions of signals, occurring among the particles at different ranges of mass.

Ø  The interaction gives rise to three fundamental forces - the strong force, the weak force and the electromagnatic force. There is a fourth force, gravity, which is suspected to be caused by a still-to-be found boson named the graviton.

Ø  Bosons are non-matter particles which are force carriers, or messengers that act between matter particles.

Ø  When some particles encounter the Higgs boson, they slow down and acquire mass. Others, such as particles of light - or photons - are not affected and have no mass.

Ø  The collisions, which mimic the moments just after the Big Bang, throw off debris signals picked up by a vast complex of detectors and the data is examined by banks of computers.

Ø  The two separate CERN teams worked independently through that data, hunting for tiny divergences which might betray the existence of the new boson, a class of particle that includes the photon, associated with light. The class is named in honour of Albert Einstein's Indian collaborator Satyendra Nath Bose.

Ø  Two CERN laboratories worked independently of each other to avoid bias. They both found the new particle in the mass region of around 125-126 Gigaelectronvolts (GeV).

Ø  The teams said that the results were "five sigma," meaning there was just a 0.00006% chance that what the two laboratories found is a mathematical quirk.

Ø  Both teams found strong signals of the new particle at around 125 to 126 gigaelectron volts (GeV) - a unit of mass-energy. That makes it some 130-140 times heavier than a proton.

Ø  Higgs, now 83, from Edinburgh University was among six theorists who in the early 1960s proposed the existence of a mechanism by which matter in the universe gained mass.

Ø  The boson is believed to exist in an invisible, ubiquitous field created a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, 13.7bn years ago.

Ø  Some commentators have labelled the new particle as "God particle", for its role in turning the Big Bang into an ordered universe.

Ø  The scientists say - "We know it must be a boson and it's the heaviest boson ever found. The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."

Ø  "For physics, in one way, it is the end of an era in that it completes the Standard Model," a scientist said of the basic theory physicists currently use to describe what they understand so far of a cosmos built from 12 fundamental particles and four forces.

Ø  UNIVERSAL THEORY :- The Higgs theory explains how particles clumped together to form stars, planets and life itself. Without the Higgs boson, the universe would have remained a formless soup of particles shooting around at the speed of light, the theory goes.

We whole-heartedly congratulate the Physicists teams – for their extraordinary discovery – and wish them greater successes in unraveling the mysteries of the Universe further.

Having said that – we also need to look at the huge super structure we are building on the Big Bang Theory. Whether the Big Bang  is, or is not a Fact – we will never know. What caused, if at all, the Big Bang, and how and why, are not easily explainable. 

There just can’t be a reaction without an action – and the action itself is a reaction, which needs another action. This chain never ends  in any distant past – even if we take it past any number of billions of years. Nor will it ever end in the future, after any number of billions of years.

We can explain movement, gravitation, mass, no-mass, light, heat, sound, touch, smell, change and so on – in absolutely scientific terms. But, can we put them together and explain INTELLIGENCE?

Can we really explain what Intelligence is? Can we explain a consciousness which at least pervades human beings?

If Human Beings do have Intelligence (and the five senses to receive and record it to some extent), what prevents Earth, Sun, and Galaxies from having extraordinary levels of Intelligence – of which we get an infinitesimally small part each – from them? Yes. They give all the Intelligence to us – if physical particles, however minute, are the only things we are made up of. And, the Big Bang theory tells us JUST THAT.

In relation to these huge moving masses in the sky – aren’t we like the white or Red cells in the human body? The cells don’t know why they do, what they do. But they do them all the same. Therefore we are alive as human beings. There is obviously a clock work installed within us, and within them, which takes us from birth to death, through a fixed linear path, unless we end the path foolishly midway.

The Indian thinking on all this is wrongly concluded as RELIGION – but it is not religion; it is not mere faith. It is absolute science. What the West does in the outer world, the Indian scientists had done partly in outer world – but mostly in the inner world.

There is no need for blind faith in any of this; Each person can prove the ultimate riddle of this Universe and the riddle of creation as such , to himself . 

But the search in outer cosmos, will never take us to the end; the ultimate Goal. We will never discover anything One hundred percent even about one atom, no, not even about one Higgs Boson particle. The search will be endless. In due course of time, the Higgs Boson Particles will, without an iota of doubt, reveal further sub-sub-sub atomic particles within them. 

If anything exists in physical form – it is made up of PARTS. 

It can’t be otherwise. Its minuteness is immaterial and does not alter this rule. Does it mean, the search is useless. No. Not at all. The external search must continue. It happened in ancient India too.

But, the inner search, a search in a space-less space within us, in the innermost recesses of the Individual, hides the most precious secrets of the world. Search for Intelligence – not just for mass, not for gravitation, not for physical properties. Search for an awareness that pervades the Individual and the entire Universe.

Indian sciences firmly say – that all that is outside of us – is also equally within us in miniature form. The whole Universe is in us in miniature form.

It is a fact that – in the external world, the Bosons, Photons, Electrons, Atoms, the whole earth, the Sun, the whole Galaxy will all fold back into a nothingness some time in future – and then come up again  in some form . We do have some proof now that  these do disappear into a nothingness. It is happening to some star in the cosmos all the time.

Likewise- human beings come up, grow, play, and disappear all the time.

People are willing to believe either science or even religion – which has come up in the last 2000-3000 years. But not earlier than that! Science which had sprung up in Ancient India is looked at with suspicion – and not with absolute scientific spirit. People are unwilling to think straightly -  and admit that huge body of scientific knowledge could have come up several lakhs of years back – when the world looked different; and extraordinary levels of scientific spirit was available in India. India was certainly not roaming bare; and not eating raw flesh – even lakhs of years back. It had extraordinary levels of knowledge and wisdom even then – which is extremely useful to humanity now.

Today-we simultaneously believe both the Big Bang theory and the 7-Day creation theory. Likewise, we simultaneously believe the Human evolution theory as in  Adam-and-Eve story and the Darwinian hypotheses both. Aren’t we excellent, highly adjusted split personalities?

We do not know who we are; yet, we know, by birth that we are going to a heaven, where we don’t know what we will be doing. All religions are so. They don’t reform the most glaring FALSITIES in them – as long as we remain mere believers.

At the same time, science co-existed with religion all the time. It was more so in India. The Indian religions do exist partly for the faithful. But, it also provides a huge opportunity for the explorer, for one who is willing to transform himself into a Powerhouse of Intelligence and awareness.

The Inner science that India promoted so perfectly - is more important to us today - than the outer science – and more beneficial too. It is also the shortest route – to more important facts about the Universe. Instead of “split-split-split –And see”; the Inner science takes us to Join-Join-Join-and become one with it.

India may produce a Satyendra Nath Bose – or many such, for the outer search too; but the inner science is India’s Forte. India has a lot to achieve in this respect.  The world has a lot to gain from it.

Ignoring this takes the world nowhere. 

The Inner science is the easiest path to the finest of truths.

All the same – we congratulate the Physicists – for their path-breaking and Path-extending discovery – of the Higgs Boson Particle.

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