Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, Member, Planning Commission says that the  discovery of Higgs Boson  or ‘God particle’ by scientists at the CERN research centre in Geneva is “very exciting” and the data needs to be studied.
Addressing media persons at New Delhi, Kasturirangan said that scientists at the European research centre “seem to have the first evidence of the creation of mass…It is very exciting..the data needs to be studied.”
Ashwani Kumar, minister of state for science and technology, said the discovery “is a matter of great interest to us”.
He added that it was too early to predict what the outcome of the discovery would be.
Scientists at the CERN research centre in Geneva said they have found a new subatomic particle that could be the Higgs boson, or the basic building block of the universe.
“We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature,” said Rolf Heuer, the director general of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) said in Geneva.
“The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle’s properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe,” Heuer was quoted as saying.
The action took place at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) where scientists have been tirelessly engaged in finding how the universe that we live in started with a Big Bang.
The particle has been the subject of a 45-year hunt for explaining how matter attains its mass, reported BBC.
The announcement of the results at CERN, home of the LHC in Geneva, was met with loud applause and cheers.
“The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. CMS is one of the teams involved in the experiment.
Dr. Kasturirangan is a noted figure in the Indian Space Program. For over 9 years until 2003, Dr. Kasturirangan steered the Indian Space programme as Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation. Under his leadership, the programme witnessed several major milestones including the successful launching and operationalisation of the India’s prestigious launch vehicles, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, the development and launching of some of the world’s best civilian remote sensing satellites, IRS-1C and 1D, new generation INSAT communication satellites, besides ocean observation satellites IRS-P3/P4.