A lot has happened in 2012 but many important stories fell by the
wayside never to mentioned again, but here at FPP we are proud to bring you the
two most underreported stories of the year. Each member of the editorial board
picked one story, so without further ado our choices.
Discovery of Higgs Boson
One of biggest stories of the year, you’re likely not overly
familiar with and most likely the biggest science story of the year, was the
probable discovery of the Higgs Boson. On July 4th, a team of researchers at
the Large Hadron Collider part of CERN in Europe announced this groundbreaking
discovery. The particle is named after the first person to theorize its
existence -- Peter Higgs; although, the name Leon M. Lederman gave it in his
book -- “the god particle” is more widely known outside of the scientific community.
A boson is one two fundamental particle types along with gluons. Bosons make up
the forces we encounter and include things like photons; whereas, gluons
include quarks and electrons. The particle is so important because of the
integral role it plays in the Standard Model and until the discovery it meant
the entire model was based off the hypothetical existence of this elusive
particle. It, in effect, is responsible for giving other particles mass. This
means without it the physical world all-around us would not exist. It does this
through a highly complex piece of particle physics called a Higgs Field. This
particle existence will lead to many new scientific discoveries that will
further grow our understanding of particle physics and hopefully one day link
it to astrophysics.
Syrian Civil War
When Bassel al-Assad was killed in a car crash in 1994, his bother
Bashar al-Assad, who was training to an ophthalmologist in London, was forced
to come back to Syria to begin his training to become the next heir to the
Syrian Presidency. And then, when his father Syria’s longtime president Hafez
al-Assad died in 2000, as expected, Bashar became the next president. Initially
seen a reformer even gaining the nickname The Hope, Bashar has proved to be
just the opposite -- a bloody and despotic tyrant.
The Arab Spring protests had gained a footing in a number of
countries by March of 2011 when Syria caught the revolution’s pulse. On the
Ides of March (15th), the country broke out in massive protest, these were violent
and viscously put down by the military. This act lite a national revolutionary
spirit that still rages on today. The government’s army is now engaged in a
full-fledged civil war against the Syrian National Coalition and its leader
Moaz al-Khatib. This group is recognized by many nations as the legitimate
government of Syria including the US. The Syrian National Coalition has support
from many Arab nations including Qatar, who played an instrumental role in the
Libyan Revolution. The most recent UN estimate puts the death in Syria at
60,000 plus nearly 1.2 million refugees, but those estimate are seen as low by
many experts on the subject.
