LONDON (AFP)
Renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking said Wednesday the
Nobel Prize should be given to Peter Higgs, the man who gave his
name to the Higgs boson particle.
Former Cambridge University professor Hawking also joked that the
discovery had actually cost him $100 in a bet.
In an interview with the BBC Wednesday, Hawking, who has motor
neurone disease, said: "This is an important result and should
earn Peter Higgs the Nobel Prize.
"But it is a pity in a way because the great advances in physics
have come from experiments that gave results we didn't expect.
"For this reason I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan
University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found. It seems I
have just lost $100."
After half a century of research, physicists announced at the
European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) Wednesday they
had found a new sub-atomic particle consistent with the elusive
Higgs boson which is believed to confer mass.
Hawking said the discovery was of major importance.
"If the decay and other interactions of this particle are as we
expect, it will be strong evidence for the so-called standard
model of particle physics, the theory that expains all our
experiments so far," Hawking said.
