THIS is with reference to the letter by Khalid Masood (July 22). The writer did not mention that the term ‘boson’ owes its name to the pioneering work of an Indian physicist, Satyendera Nath Bose (1894-1974), a lecturer at Kolkata University, who in 1924 sent a paper to Albert Einstein which is the initial and rudimentary basis of the boson theory.

Later on, apart from British scientist Peter Higgs (83) and his Belgian colleague Francois Englert (79), there are some other scientists, namely, Robert Brout of Belgium, who died last year, Americans Gerald Guralink, 75 , Carl Hagen, 75, and Briton Tom Kibble, 80, who jointly wrote a separate paper on the mechanism in the same year (1964) as Higgs.

Moreover, American Nobel Prize winner Philip Anderson, 88, also claimed to have come up with the concept two years earlier.

That conceptual theory of Higgs boson, by and large, now stands empirically verified through complex experiments at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operated by the European Organisation of Nuclear Research (CERN), in a 22-kilometre ring shaped tunnel deep underground near Geneva. The experiments found new particles consistent with Higgs.

Surprisingly, the writer has dubbed all that arduous scientific work merely as an elusion and illusion and outrightly denied the Big Bang theory as well.

The scientists from Albert Einstein down to legendary Stephen Hawking believe in the Big Bang theory as there is, so far, no other plausible alternative scientifically valid theory to explain the creation of the universe just as there is no alternative scientific theory other than the theory of evolution expounded brilliantly by Charles Darwin to explain the origin and evolution of species.

However, I agree that ‘God particle’ is a misnomer and no scientist, not even Peter Higgs, described and subscribed to that popular but scientifically incorrect term. God particle or precisely Higgs boson is the non-matter fundamental particle which acted as agent, messenger and force-carrier, seconds after the Big Bang, to confer mass to sub-atomic particles, the building blocks of the universe.

If we view that theory in the religious perspective, then it is logically safe to infer that the discovery of Higgs boson leads to the very fact that the ultimate and absolute reality is all-pervading energy (‘Noor’) essential for each and every form of existence.

That energy is the divine manifestation or attribute of God or in other words God is the sole and eternal source of that energy forming the essential basis of the whole universe.

That scientific concept conforms and confirms the universal spiritual concept of Pantheism (Wahdatul Wajood). Belief in Sufi thoughts of Wahdatul Wajood/universal spiritual unity consolidates the concept of universal humanity overcoming the hatred, prejudice, parochialism, bigotry, sectarianism, disunity and divisiveness, the menance of our present day society.

ABAIDUR REHMAN Faisalabad