Peter Higgs died last week at age 94. He was a Nobel prize-winning physicist. In 1964 he theorized there must be a subatomic particle that would explain how the stars and planets acquired their mass. It wasn't until 2012 the particle was confirmed.
Maybe you're thinking "so what?"
This particle is known as the Higgs boson and without it, the universe we know and love could not exist. Hence the nickname: The God Particle.
It helps scientists understand one of the most fundamental riddles of the universe: How the Big Bang created something out of nothing 13.8 billion years ago.
I don't want to brag, but I already knew about the Higgs boson theory. That's because, for years, I was a fan of The Bib Bang Theory. Even the lyrics to the show's theme song give us an exciting explanation of how we got here. But it doesn't give us a reason for how we got here.
On the show, theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper explained the Higgs boson theory several times. But the best one was first aired on January 19, 2010 where he tried to explain the theory while playing Pictionary with Penny. She, of course, didn't get it.
But my favorite explanation was given by Young Sheldon on the second season of that show, April 22, 2022. Sheldon, who is a little severn year old genius, is frightened because his mother, after experiencing a tragedy, is depressed and questioning her faith.
She tells Sheldon "Faith is something that you can't know for sure is real."
He was trying to let her know that the beginning of "everything" wasn't by chance. "What are the odds that it would happen all by itself?"
It was the God Particle.
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