CERN and the discovery of the God Particle

The large hadron collider (accelerator) at CERN is hard working again.  Good news about CERN always saddens me, leading me to lament the cancellation of an even larger (3 times larger) hadron collider in Waxahachie, Texas (outside Dallas) by the short-sighted politicians in 1993.

In 1964 Peter Higgs and two other scientists proposed a theory that there got to have a particle (Leon Lederman called it “God Particle”) to explain why other particles have a mass.  The elusive particle was finally discovered at CERN (it could have been at Waxahachie, Texas) in 2012.  Peter Higgs and Francois Englert were quickly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.  Robert Brout didn’t live long enough for the Nobel glory.

I recall there was a good article (“A Second Big Bang In Geneva?”) in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago.  All the best and the brightest U.S. particle physicists have all emigrated to Europe where CERN is.