What did Stephen Hawking say about the Higgs boson?

According to Hawking, 72, at very high energy levels the Higgs boson, which gives shape and size to everything that exists, could become unstable. This, he said, could cause a "catastrophic vacuum decay" that would lead space and time to collapse, 'Express.co.uk' reported.8 Sept 2014

What particle did Stephen Hawking discover?

The Higgs boson "This could happen at any time and we wouldn't see it coming," said Hawking. The Higgs boson, also known as the God particle, was discovered in 2012 by scientists at CERN — who operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory.

What Stephen Hawking said about CERN?

In his foreword for the new book Starmus: 5 Years of Man in Space, Stephen Hawking warns that the Higgs boson particle (also called the “God” particle, because monotheism) discovered by CERN scientists in 2012 and thought to give matter its mass, could destroy the Universe and “we wouldn't see it coming.”

Can Higgs boson destroy the universe?

No. The Higgs boson is not dangerous and will not destroy the universe. The Higgs boson is a type of particle, a little ripple in the Higgs field.

Why Higgs boson is called God particle?

The story goes that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman referred to the Higgs as the "Goddamn Particle." The nickname was meant to poke fun at how difficult it was to detect the particle. It took nearly half a century and a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator to do it.

What is the Higgs boson particle in simple terms?

The Higgs boson is the fundamental particle associated with the Higgs field, a field that gives mass to other fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks. A particle's mass determines how much it resists changing its speed or position when it encounters a force. Not all fundamental particles have mass.

Why is the Higgs boson so important?

The Higgs boson particle is so important to the Standard Model because it signals the existence of the Higgs field, an invisible energy field present throughout the universe that imbues other particles with mass. Since its discovery two years ago, the particle has been making waves in the physics community.

What is Higgs boson theory?

The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory.

Did CERN find the God particle?

Speaking to a packed audience Wednesday morning in Geneva, CERN director general Rolf Heuer confirmed that two separate teams working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are more than 99 percent certain they've discovered the Higgs boson, aka the God particle—or at the least a brand-new particle exactly where they …

What if the Higgs field were zero?

3 : If the Higgs field were zero, the matter fields would be rearranged, as would be the forces and force carriers. None of the known particles would be massive, though the Higgs particles (of which there would be four, at least) would be massive.