Indian, Israeli, Pakistani scientists and others from many countries and observer states, your assistance will be noted.
At last, a European project triumphs
MY TAKE
Alex Lo
Jul 05, 2012
Amid all the doom and gloom about the possible break-up of the euro zone, another grand European project which has time and again been threatened with failure has delivered. Many of the world's finest physicists at Cern have, by using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), found what is likely to be the Higgs boson, the long-sought particle needed to complete the standard model of physics. For now, they are calling it a Higgs-like particle. If it deviates from the standard model, scientists say it would be even more exciting as that would open new possibilities. But either way, a crucial step has been taken to explain how the universe came into being, why some particles have mass and others have little or no mass. The Higgs boson has been dubbed the "God particle", though with such a powerful theory we may not need a Creator to explain the origin of matter and the universe.
There is no single hero or nation to claim credit, though Peter Higgs, the British scientist after whom the particle is named, surely deserves much of the limelight. A multinational project, the hunt for the Higgs boson has been a primary goal for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or Cern. This great European experiment has been open to contributions by scientists from around the world. Americans could have claimed this Holy Grail of physics for themselves. Indeed, analysing data from their defunct particle accelerator, scientists at the Fermilab near Chicago say they have seen tantalising hints of the particle. But they probably missed their best chance when the US Congress killed funding for the Superconducting Super Collider - designed to be several times more powerful than the LHC - in the early 1990s. With this as background, US writer Herman Wouk wrote a highly amusing novel called A Hole in Texas. Its premise was that the Chinese, with the rise of their nation and science, end up discovering the Higgs boson. In reality, the Americans did not have the money and the Chinese did not have the research infrastructure to claim the prize.
Now it's the highly collaborative Europeans who have delivered. If only Europe's politicians can do the same!
Latest News Columns & Insight from Hong Kong & China | SCMP.com
Higgs boson's many great minds cause a Nobel prize headache
With Nobel prizes traditionally going to a maximum of three people, rows over who deserves credit have already broken out
Physicist Peter Higgs (right) and François Englert at Cern during a press conference to announce the probable discovery of the Higgs boson. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images
It's good news for physicists, but one dreadful headache for the Nobel committee. The discovery – or near discovery – of the Higgs boson, will see someone win a Nobel prize, but who deserves credit for the work is a minefield.
Traditionally, the science Nobel prizes are given to a maximum of three people, whose contributions are judged to be the most important. The rule is archaic, in that it harks back to a time when much of science was done by individuals or smaller groups.
Two teams of scientists at Cern, amounting to thousands of people, carried out the painstaking work of spotting traces of the particle amid the subatomic debris of more than a thousand trillion collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider. All deserve credit for that effort.
But this is the least of the Nobel committee's problems. The prize is more likely to go to theoretical physicists who worked on the theory of particle masses almost 50 years ago. Here the parentage becomes more muddled.
Six physicists published the theory within four months of each other in 1964. They built on the work of others.
The first to publish, that August, were Robert Brout and François Englert at the Free University of Brussels. Brout died in 2011, and the award cannot be given posthumously.
Second to publish was Peter Higgs, with two papers on the theory in September and October 1964. In his second paper, he became the first to mention explicitly that the theory demanded a new particle in nature, which was given the name Higgs boson in 1972. Drawing attention to the particle was crucial, because it gave scientists something concrete to hunt.
Third to publish was a group of three theorists, including two US researchers, Dick Hagen and Gerry Guralnik, and a British physicist, Tom Kibble. Their work was published in November.
All three teams worked independently.
So there are at least five living physicists who can lay claim to the Nobel prize. If the particle discovered at Cern is confirmed to be the Higgs boson, then Higgs is certain to be honoured. That leaves four physicists competing for two places. Englert published first, and would be hard to dismiss. That leaves one place left.
Rows over who deserves credit have already broken out. In 2010, the US physicists complained when the organisers of a conference in Paris on the Higgs particle credited only Higgs, Englert and Brout for the theory. Guralnik and Hagen believe some European physicists are trying to write them out of history. The argument against them is that while their work was independent, they still published last.
The quandary raises a familiar issue for the Nobel committee. Restricting those honoured with a Nobel helps maintain their prestige. But in modern science, few discoveries are born in final form from so few parents.
Higgs boson's many great minds cause a Nobel prize headache | Science | guardian.co.uk
