Today is a date in history to note for humankind and for our
understanding of the universe. Scientists at European
Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have announced that
they believe they have found the elusive Higgs boson – the
particle that elementary particles interact with to gain mass.
The search began nearly 50 years ago with the invention of the
mechanism for mass generation by Phil Anderson in the context of
superconductivity. Its existence as a sub-atomic particle was
first hypothesized by Peter Higgs. On behalf of the Liberal
Party I would like to congratulate the more than 100 Canadian
researchers who have been working for many decades on this
international collaboration at CERN. While research into high
energy physics certainly does not come cheaply, and we don’t
always know immediately what practical uses the results of that
research will have, understanding the universe we live in is an
important activity that has never failed to give us tools by
which we might move humanity forward and im