Physicist expects 'God particle' will be found soon

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A large dipole magnet, part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The $2 billion accelerator is expected to uncover the so-called 'God particle' predicted by British physicist Peter Higgs.

By Alexander G. Higgins, Associated Press

GENEVA — The father of a theoretical subatomic particle dubbed "the God particle" says he's almost sure it will be confirmed in the next year in a race between powerful research equipment in the United States and Europe.

British physicist Peter Higgs, who more than 40 years ago postulated the existence of the particle in the makeup of the atom, said his visit to a new accelerator in Geneva last weekend encouraged him that the Higgs boson will soon be seen.

The $2 billion Large Hadron Collider, under construction since 2003, is expected to start operating by June at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (known as CERN).

It likely will take several months before the hundreds of scientists from around the world are ready to start smashing together protons to study their composition.

Higgs said Monday the particle may already have been created at the rival Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago, where the Tevatron is currently the world's most powerful particle accelerator.

"The Tevatron has plenty of energy to do it," Higgs said. "It's just the difficulty of analyzing the data which prevents you from knowing quickly what's hiding in the data."

The massive new CERN collider, which has been installed in a 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border, will be more powerful still and will be better able to show what particles are created in the collisions of beams of protons traveling at the speed of light.

The new Geneva collider will re-create the rapidly changing conditions in the universe a split second after the Big Bang. It will be the closest that scientists have come to the event that they theorize was the beginning of the universe. They hope the new equipment will enable them to study particles and forces yet unobserved.

But Fermilab still has time to be first if it can show that it has discovered the Higgs boson, Higgs said.

Nobel laureate Leon Lederman has dubbed the theoretical boson "the God particle" because its discovery could unify understanding of particle physics and help humans "know the mind of God."

Higgs told reporters he is hoping to receive confirmation of his theory by the time he turns 80 in May 2009.

If not, he added, "I'll just have to ask my GP to keep me alive a bit longer," referring to his general practitioner, not the God particle, a term he does not embrace because he fears it might offend some people.

Higgs predicted the existence of the boson while working at the University of Edinburgh to explain how atoms — and the objects they make up — have weight.

Without the particle, the basic physics theory — the "standard model" — lacks a crucial element, because it fails to explain how other subatomic particles — such as quarks and electrons — have mass.

The Higgs theory is that the bosons create a field through which the other particles pass.

The particles that encounter difficulty going through the field as though they are passing through molasses pick up more inertia, and mass. Those that pass through more easily are lighter.

Higgs said he would be "very, very puzzled" if the particle is never found because he cannot image what else could explain how particles get mass.

Higgs said initial reaction to his ideas in the early 1960s was skeptical.

"My colleagues thought I was a bit of an idiot," he said, noting that his initial paper explaining how his theory worked was rejected by an editor at CERN.

He said a colleague spent the summer at CERN right after he did his work on the theory.

"He came back and said, 'At CERN they didn't see that what you were talking about had much to do with particle physics.'

"I then added on some additional paragraphs and sent it off across the Atlantic to Physical Review Letters, who accepted it. The mention of what became known as the Higgs-boson was part of the extra which was added on."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Evolution In The Classroom: 'Evolution Machine' Lets Students See It Happen

Evolution has taken another step away from being dismissed as "a theory" in the classroom, thanks to a new article in PLoS Biology. The research article, by Brian Paegel and Gerald Joyce of The Scripps Research Institute, California, documents the automation of evolution: they have produced a computer-controlled system that can drive the evolution of improved RNA enzymes--biological catalysts--without human input. In the future, this "evolution-machine" could feature in the classroom as well as the lab, allowing students to watch evolution happen in their biology lessons.

The evolution of molecules via scientific experiment is not new. The first RNA enzymes to be "evolved" in the lab were generated in the 1990s. But what is exciting about this work is that the process has been made automatic. Thus evolution is directed by a machine without requiring human intervention-other then providing the initial ingredients and switching the machine on.

As all students of Darwin know, evolution occurs when there is variation in a population; where some variants confer a survival or reproductive advantage to the individual, and where the basis for this advantage can be inherited. Finally, there must be a selection pressure--a reason that not all animals can survive or reproduce--such as a limited supply of food or a predator that must be avoided.

These are the principles that the Paegel/Joyce system uses. The system begins with a population of RNA enzymes, which are the individuals that will evolve, and these enzymes vary slightly from each other. The enzymes are challenged to catalyse a reaction, and those that do catalyse it bind a "promoter" sequence to themselves in the process. Other enzymes in the machine (which act like part of the machine, rather than part of the experiment) cause any RNA enzyme bound to a promoter to be reproduced; therefore, enzymes that are good at reacting with the substrate become more numerous. This is analogous to those animals that are most successful being able to reproduce, both of which lead to the advantageous variation becoming more common.

In their system, Paegel and Joyce establish selection by having the evolution-machine reduce the availability of the reactants as time progresses. Therefore, the only enzymes to be reproduced are those that can bind a promoter when promoters are scarce. Any random mutation that allows an enzyme to bind a promoter more effectively is beneficial and will come to dominate the final population of enzymes. Throughout the process, the evolution-machine can propagate the reaction itself, because whenever the enzyme population size reaches a predetermined level, the machine removes a fraction of the population and replaces the starting chemicals needed for the reaction to continue.

By evolving the RNA enzyme according to this selection regime, the evolution-machine generated an enzyme that was better; it could work quickly with much lower concentrations of reactant then the ancestral enzymes could. The final enzyme at the end of Paegel and Joyce's experiment had 11 mutations which together made it 90 times more efficient at using the starting ingredients.

This beautifully illustrates what about evolution is random and what is not. While the end point is predicted by the selection pressure--i.e., the decreasing concentration of ingredients determines that enzymes will evolve to cope with decreased concentration--the actual mutations that allow this are completely random and cannot be predicted at the outset--i.e., if you bought an "evolution machine" and ran the same experiment, your end product would be an enzyme that could cope with low concentrations too, but the mutations that it acquired to do this might be different.

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Woodpecker with freakish beak photographed

This extraordinary woodpecker - with its freakishly long beak - has been spotted feeding from a domestic garden feeder.

Experts have claimed the beak was the biggest they had ever seen and are surprised it can fly - let alone feed.

Woody', with his extra long beak, using a feeder (right) and a woodpecker with a normal beak (left)

Bird watchers Janet and Bob Morton first spied red-crested male 'Woody' over the winter at their home in Rosedale, near Pickering, North Yorkshire.

Mr Morton, 62, a retired RAF pilot, said: "Woody comes everyday now, you can't miss him. We first noticed the beak at Christmas when he arrived with a female and a baby.

"We just couldn't believe how big it was. Compared to his mate you can see it should be at least half that size."

The woodpecker's beak is used to signal possession of territory to rivals and locate winding tunnels in tree trunks containing grubs and larvae.

Luckily, Woody has no trouble flying, nesting or feeding and has not chopped down any trees so far.

Tony Richardson, from the RSPB in Exeter, said: "The creature does have a serious beak deformity. It's probably 120 per cent bigger than it should be.

"A bird's beak grows much like hair and nails on a human but natural wear and tear should keep it in check, especially on a woodpecker.

"Many birds wouldn't be able to survive with this handicap but luckily woodpeckers have enormous tongues so this one is still able to gather food."

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