Why 'Big Bang' owes it all to a professor from Edinburgh

For Professor Peter Higgs the 44 years since he made his groundbreaking discovery have dulled his excitement to the extent that he confessed he probably wasn't "completely awake" when the historic test of his theory began.

Now long since retired, the 79-year-old seemed happy to admit that he hadn't bothered to tune in to TV broadcasts of the long-awaited switch-on of the giant machine in Geneva, which it is hoped will finally prove whether or not his explanation is right.

Another reason for his relaxed attitude to the experiment using the world's biggest scientific instrument is that he remains convinced that it is.

His theory is generally regarded as the correct explanation of how sub-atomic particles are weightless yet atoms have mass. According to Mr Higgs these tiny particles acquire mass, and therefore weight, as a result of interacting with an invisible "treacle-like" field, which is associated with other particles now known as Higgs bosons.

Until now it has been impossible to test the theory conclusively, because the technology did not exist to create the high-energy particles in a laboratory.

But yesterday a gigantic 27km-long machine called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) attempted to do just that. It has been dubbed the Big Bang experiment because in order to try to find the particles thought to be the basis of the universe scientists are re-creating the conditions just after the cosmic explosion thought to have created it.

To do so they have devised the LHC, which is capable of smashing two beams of particles together at near-light speed.

It is a very different scientific world to the one in which Mr Higgs came up with his now-famous theory one weekend in 1964, "somewhere between" his New Town home and his Edinburgh University office in Roxburgh Street.

An hour after yesterday's experiment got successfully under way at the European Centre for Particle Physics (CERN), he made the same journey from home to the university's offices to speak about his feelings and expectations.

He said: "It is amazing in terms of the scale of the experimental effort that is needed to do this. It was not at all clear at the time just how big a machine would have to be built to find it.

"I am pretty confident. I would be very surprised and disappointed if it turns out not to be there. It will mean that I no longer understand things I think I understand well."

One famous fellow scientist who is convinced that Mr Higgs is wrong is Stephen Hawking, who has bet $100 that the elusive particle will not be found.

It is a wager that the Scottish academic is certain Mr Hawking will lose.

Fellow Scots physicists backed Mr Higgs. Professor Richard Kenway, head of physics and astronomy at Edinburgh University, said: "We have built up a huge amount of evidence that the theory is correct, but it only works if there is a Higgs boson, or something which is behaving like a Higgs boson. We can pretty much pinpoint what the mass of the Higgs boson must be hence we have a huge amount of confidence that we will find it."

However, he added that it would be "in a sense more exciting" if the particle was not found and the whole theory came crashing down. Such a result would transform the entire particles physics syllabus.

Professor Peter Clarke, head of Edinburgh University's Institute for e-science, explained: "Almost all scientists have lived and breathed that the Higgs boson exists for the last however many years. It's built into courses as if it exists so if it doesn't every thesis ever written would have to be changed."

It will take at least a year to find the answer, and more likely about three years thanks to the vast quantities of data the LHC is expected to produce.

More than 2000 scientists, including Scottish experts, will analyse the information through a new computer network christened The Grid.

It might sound of no relevance to the layman but scientists are predicting that it could become "the new worldwide web" for it was a CERN project that led to the internet as we now know it.

Professor Kenway Smith, of Glasgow University, who works with LHC scientists at CERN, yesterday spelled out the benefits to business and the public.

He said: "All the commercial companies working at CERN have benefited to the tune of about three times the investment for developments."

Among those firms is Forres-based Scotland Electronics (International) Ltd, which supplied key parts for the LHC including units designed to disperse the high-energy beam safely. One alarming potential problem is that the experiment could create black holes and destroy the world. However, such concerns have been rubbished.

Mr Higgs himself yesterday branded the fears "a load of crap" as he asserted again his belief that his boson will be found. Assuming he is right on both counts, a Nobel prize for science seems certain, which he admitted "would be nice".

The troublesome Higgs boson is far from the only result of interest or significance. Other revelations the LHC could bring include information about the so-called dark matter that makes up around 25% of the universe.

The possibility of a "fourth dimension" has also been raised, though scientists admit that science fiction currently holds more theories than they do.

In the meantime they, Mr Higgs and the rest of the world will have to wait and see what the second Big Bang brings. A £500 prize has been offered to whoever comes up with the best alternative name for the Large Hadron Collider.

The Royal Society of Chemistry is putting up the cash because it believes the LHC title is boring. Suggestions for the new name should be e-mailed to edwardsj@rsc.org

Decades on, a chance to find the elusive Higgs boson

PHYSICISTS have long puzzled over the mystery of how sub-atomic particles can be weightless and yet the atoms that combine to create the world have mass.

In 1964 Professor Peter Higgs hit upon a theory that has been widely accepted ever since.

His explanation is that the particles, or bosons, are weightless until they interact with an invisible field in which they gain mass as a result of other particles.

The field is believe to make the bosons sluggish, in the same way that someone walking through treacle or mud becomes slower and heavier as their feet become clogged.

The resulting mass varies depending on how the particles interact with the field.

In honour of the Edinburgh professor's achievement the key particle became known as the Higgs boson.

It is also known as the God particle because it is so fundamental to understanding the basis and behaviour of the matter from which the universe is created.

Although Mr Higgs's theory has formed the basis of scientific teaching for years and evidence has built supporting his view, the key Higgs boson has never been found.

As a result the explanation has been impossible to prove once and for all.

The problem is due to the nature of the particles, which have such high energy that they cannot be created in a laboratory.

Yesterday that changed, however, as the world's largest scientific instrument, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator, was switched on.

The groundbreaking experiment is expected to find out once and for all whether the Higgs boson exists.