The God Particle - National Geographic Magazine

Current Issue June 2008
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The big science of the very small

Physicists have high hopes for Europe's giant new atom smasher—they want nothing less than to crack the code of the physical universe.

0 525 img/particle.jpg 700 525 13369344 16750899 img/smashing-proton.jpg Smashing protons Trillions of protons rush toward collisions at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light. Quarks and gluons inside the protons collide, exploding with enough energy to create the elusive Higgs (See figure 2). 10 10 1 1. Smashing protons 16777215 13369344 10 Verdana 0 8 0 1 0 true 223 260 -55 -30 13369344 16750899 img/protonmakeup.jpg Proton makeup Protons are composed of even smaller particles: three quarks held together by massive gluons. 10 10 1 Proton makeup 16777215 13369344 10 Verdana 0 8 0 1 0 true 118 216 -48 -31 13369344 16750899 img/higgs-particle.jpg The Higgs particle Probably 100 to 200 times the mass of a proton, The Higgs particle is unstable: It will last less than a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second before decaying into a spray of other particles. 10 10 1 2. The Higgs particle 16777215 13369344 10 Verdana 0 8 0 1 0 true 457 251 -41 12 13369344 16750899 Title Text 10 10 0.001 The Big Science of the Very Small 16777215 13369344 10 Verdana 0 8 0 1 0 false 36 30 680 -102 13369344 16750899 img/evidence.jpg Signs of success Evidence for the Higgs will be found in the telltale spirals and streaks left in LHC detectors by the particles created as it disintegrates. 10 10 1 3. Evidence of the Higgs 16777215 13369344 10 Verdana 0 8 0 1 0 true 600 297 -51 13 13369344 16750899 Beyond the Higgs Why is there anything? Theoretically, the big bang should have yielded equal amounts of matter and antimatter that annihilated each other, leaving a largely empty universe. So why is our universe almost exclusively matter? The movements of distant galaxies and supernovae hint that the dark expanse of space holds vastly more matter and energy than we see in all the stars and galaxies. The LHC could shed light on this dark matter and dark energy. 10 10 1 Next: Frontiers beyond the Higgs 16777215 13369344 10 Verdana 0 8 0 1 0 true 575 413 -77 -25