Top 10 science stories of 2008 -- #1: the hunt for the God particle

December 28, 4:21 PMScience News ExaminerMeg Marquardt

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The LHC.  Credit AP.

In celebration of the approaching New Year, I present a list of the top ten science stories of 2008.  Taken from the vast expanse of all fields of science, they may not be everyone's top ten, but they are among the top news makers and will have repercussions well past the ending days of 2008.

When I first settled down to make this list, I hashed out the order with a fellow physicist friend.  Much to our chagrin, we both decided that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) most certainly was the biggest science story of the year.  I wrinkled my nose at this outcome, for deep, deep down, I hate the crap out of this machine.

The design is gigantic and beautiful:  over 16 miles of ultra-frozen, entirely vacuumed (meaning no atmosphere) tunnels buried in an area that straddles the border between France and Switzerland.  The large circular track was built with the specific purpose of accelerating photons (unlike electrons that many linear accelerators deal with) from different directions and crashing them into one another.  This cosmic collision causes rapid decays into different, smaller particles.  The scientists are on the hunt for the impossible, searching for the last particle that might finally bring the whole of theory of physics together: The God Particle.  

It was turned on September 10th. And then promptly broke down, before any true experiments could be run, bringing the whole $9 billion dollar project to a halt.  I laughed the vindictive laugh of a woman who was unnaturally glad of someone else's failure.  I couldn't help it.  Jealously fueled the laughter.  For years, I'd been an experimentalist biophysicist, one who dealt with equipment breaking on a daily basis, one who was trying to unlock the causes of hearing loss.  But in those years, the story that got all the headlines (and a ridiculous amount of funding) was the stupid LHC.  Another lab in my physics department had role in the creation of the undeniably amazing project.  Constantly hearing lectures about the LHC and learning the amount of money and press coverage going into it was obnoxious.  And so when it broke, I was happy as a clam.

But it was a superficial happiness.  Because deep, deep, deep down, way below my hatred for the LHC, I want this experiment to succeed.  I want it probably more than anything.

Even if all fails and the God Particle isn't found, the fact that the LHC even came into being is a monumental human success.  One scientist compared it to building the pyramids or the Great Wall.  In all honesty, it's no wonder it had a hiccup at startup.  Something as complex as a 16-mile long tunnel full of the most delicate and detailed equipment ever built is bound to have a few kinks in the beginning.  The reason behind the halt in experiments was the one of the multitudes of magnets in the machine was hemorrhaging a helium-based cooling liquid.  Even fixing this problem would take weeks as the area had to be thawed from its near absolute zero temperatures (it is kept that cold to simulate space), fixed, and then refrozen.  It was decided, however, that since it was already warmed up, other repairs should be done as well.  The new expected start date is sometime in the spring or early summer of 2009.  So the wait for the hunt of the God Particle has begun again.

The God Particle in question is the theoretical Higgs boson.  It is the missing link of physics.  The Higgs boson is the black hole in what is known as the Standard Model, the model by which physicists explain the forces of the world (such as the electromagnetic force).  The Higgs boson it thought to be the particle that gives all others mass, or weight—a fundamental aspect of matter itself.  Discovering the Higgs boson would be the find of the century, reshaping the way physicists views the basic building blocks of the universe. By accelerating protons at one another, scientists hope to recreate the moments after the Big Bang, a time when these Higgs bosons should be easy to finally catch with experimental equipment.  Easy, of course, being a relative word.  

The question that is often raised with the LHC goes something like this, "Neato experiment, but why should I care?"  In honesty, I sometimes share this view point.  Will finding the Higgs boson affect me in any way?  Will it help me in my search for the causes of hearing loss?  The honest answer is that nobody knows.  The LHC offers something that most science cannot: the thrill of pure exploration.  Yes, there is a hypothesis behind the studies, but nothing like this has ever been done before.  Perhaps the God Particle won't ever be found, but indtead entirely different discoveries can be made, ones that may impact the entire world.  After all, when electrons were discovered, no one knew what they did.  But they have revolutionized the technology industry in a way that has impacted millions of people.  All this for a tiny particle.

So yes, I hate it.  And yes, I love it.  There is an excitement to the LHC that is undeniable, the pride behind building something so vastly complex and the beautiful thrill of exploring the unknown.  If you take away all the hype, the funding, and fanfare, I can see the LHC for what it truly is: science at its best.  There are few things more exhilarating than pushing out to sea and letting the wind take you where it will. Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, had the most eloquent summary of heart behind the LHC: "When Columbus sailed west, he thought he was going to find something. He didn't find what he thought he was going to find, but he did find something interesting,"

We will just have to wait until the New Year to see what the LHC will uncover.  Hopefully it will be something amazing enough to find its way onto 2009's Top Ten Science stories of the year.

Check out the rest of the list here.