Hawking bets CERN mega-machine won't find 'God's Particle'

Tags: Science, Physics, Gravity, Inertia, Lhc
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Renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet 100 dollars (70 euros) that a mega-experiment this week will not find an elusive particle seen as a holy grail of cosmic science

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In the most complex scientific experiment ever undertaken, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be switched on Wednesday, accelerating sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light before smashing them together.

"The LHC will increase the energy at which we can study particle interactions by a factor of four. According to present thinking, this should be enough to discover the Higgs particle," Hawking told BBC radio.

"I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again. I have a bet of 100 dollars that we won't find the Higgs," added Hawking, whose books including "A Brief History of Time" have sought to popularise study of stellar physics.

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@Robert Gentel,

I agree. They will not find the Higgs Boson.

I believe (but cannot prove) that matter exhibits properties of mass and inertia because it distorts space and because space itself resists asymmetrical distortion. It is this resistance to asymmetrical distortion which we interpret as mass. Matter itself does not possess mass, it simply occupies a point in space which we can not differentiate from the associated distortion.

If I am correct, then the only reason matter and energy have physical properties at all, is because of their interaction with space itself (the curvature of), and if that's the case, then the Higgs Boson becomes unnecessary for defining mass.

Just my personal theory (which I cannot prove).

Hawking bets CERN mega-machine won't find 'God's Particle'

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