how much faith would it require to spend a couple of billion dollars, dig a hole a couple of miles under the ground, put a machine in it, and spend 20 years, just to look for a God Particle,
if you didn't have faith that the particle existed, you wouldn't waste all that time and money.
taughtbuffet,
The Higgs Boson or The Higgs particle is a massive scalar elementary particle theorized by Robert Brout, François Englert, Peter Higgs, Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and Tom Kibble in 1964 (see 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers) and is a key building block in the Standard Model.
The work done to detect this particle was done to gather information to verify or otherwise the correctness of the model. If Higgs Bosons were not found that would have been just as valid an out come as finding one. In the case of the absence of the particle, the Standard Model would require a major rethink.
I don't think that the work was done on faith that the particle existed. My point is that if they had faith (ie completely certain) that it existed they would not have bothered to go to all the effort to look.
A different way of looking at the same events, I suppose.
