Serbia's Vinca Institute, China's IHEP sign agreements on cooperation

BELGRADE - Serbia's Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences and the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences signed on Monday two agreements on cooperation on projects aimed at further studies of the Higgs boson - also known as the God particle - to explain in more detail the structure of the universe and its future.

The agreements will ensure the Vinca Institute's continuous involvement in a Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) project to be hosted by IHEP, the Institute's scientific adviser Ivanka Bozovic told Tanjug.

"In the same way it has been doing throughout its long and rich scientific tradition, Vinca is keeping up with global science. The project is a part of a Higgs factory project that will produce millions of bosons. However, this is not about studying a single particle that many know very little about and do not understand why its properties matter. This is not only about studying the Higgs boson as a newly-discovered particle in a series of existing ones in the standard model of particle physics - this is about the fact that the characteristics of the Higgs boson, which we do not know accurately enough, are closely linked not only with the structure of the universe we live in, but its evolution and future as well," Bozovic explained.