Stephen Hawking: Higgs-Boson God Particle Disappointing, Says We Have Less Than 1000 Years On Earth
The discovery of the so-called "God Particle" has made a lot of theoretical physics happy...except the most famous one in the world.
The Inquisitr is reporting that Nobel laureate Stephen Hawking thinks that the discovery of the Higgs boson particle makes the field of physics less interesting. While the rest of the physics world thinks the discovery is a landmark in the field, Hawking said he would have preferred it if the particle remained a mystery.
But, according to CNET, Hawking's comments aren't as curmudgeony as they sound. Rather, Hawking's statement is based on the thought that because of the discovery of the God Particle, physics will stop in its research of other interesting concepts as supersymmetry. Supersymmetry, according to theoretical physics, states that all sub-atomic particles have something called "superpartners." This theory, while abstract on its face, proposed to help physicists understand dark matter, which makes up over 1/4 of the universe.
Hawking's next hope is that, thanks to the discovery of the God Particle, physics will use its discovery to propose, and ultimately discover, a unifying theory of the universe. Hawking also says that he hopes that science will venture beyond the confines of Earth. "I don't think we will survive another thousand years without escaping beyond our fragile planet. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space," he said.
In particle physics, the Higgs boson particle -- better known as the God Particle -- has no spin, electric charge, or color charge, and decays into other particles immediately. Its existence proves every fundamental theory of particle physics. So, what does its existence mean for the "real world"? Its practical application cannot be accurately seen as of yet, simply because we can't apply the theories in the real world as of yet (on the other hand, that's not something that could have been done when cell phone technologies were first developed in the 1960's, either).
What's your take on this discovery? Leave your thoughts in the comments!