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Columbia Science: Searching for the Higgs Particle

April 13, 2012

Watch video of President Lee C. Bollinger's introduction to the World Leaders Forum event. (10:17)

Watch video of the World Leaders Forum event. (1:00:05)

In anticipation of the potential for experimental verification of the existence of the Higgs boson—a long-hypothesized particle thought responsible for endowing other elementary particles with mass—the World Leaders Forum hosted a special program, co-sponsored by the Columbia Science Initiative, on April 18 at 4:00 p.m. in the Low Library rotunda.

Full video of the event is available above.

Prominent Columbia physicists and two of the nation’s top science journalists discussed the questions, “What if we find the Higgs particle? And what if we don't?" Sometimes referred to as the “God particle,” if it exists, the Higgs particle could change our understanding of the physical world.

The panel included Michael Tuts, Columbia University professor of physics and U.S. ATLAS operations program manager at the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory in Geneva; Brian Greene, Columbia University professor of physics and mathematics; Dennis Overbye, The New York Times science reporter covering physics; and Mariette DiChristina, editor-in-chief of Scientific American.

The discussion was moderated by Amber Miller, dean of science for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Columbia University professor of physics. A question and answer session followed.