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What is the Higgs boson?
The Higgs boson is a type of particle which is a part of what’s called The Standard Model of particle
physics. This is a set of rules that lays out our understanding of the fundamental building blocks of the
universe.
Dr. Andreas Krassnigg, a physicist with the University of Graz in Austria, explains: “This Standard
Model describes a set of particles from which we can attempt to build the universe as we know it. In
addition, it helps us understand what happens in the universe by having a precise picture of the
smallest building blocks of matter and their interactions.”
However, one glaring problem to date has been the lack of proof of the existence of the Higgs boson –
this is a key part of the Standard Model and scientists have simply had to assume it exists. If this new
particle is the Higgs boson, it will help explain why particles have mass and validate the Standard
Model as a true explanation for how the universe is put together.
This video by PHD Comics does a good job to explain the basics of what the Higgs boson is, how it’s
been looked for it using CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, and why physicists care so much.
Why is it important?
Essentially because it proves that our understanding of the basic workings of the universe is correct. If
the Higgs boson didn’t exist, the Standard Model would be proved incorrect. Physicist-cum-startup
entrepreneur at PeerReach, Nico Schoonderwoerd says that it’s “A major milestone for the standard
model,” as it validates all the work done, and all the money poured into its discovery.
Krassnigg elaborates: “Picture the Standard Model as a car. Then you could imagine the Higgs boson
to be, or provide, the wheels of that car. It had to be decided experimentally whether or not the car
(our view of particle physics) actually is as we expected it to be, i.e., whether it actually does
have wheels or not.
“For our car this is a question of central importance, since it determines what the car can do and how.
While not having wheels would not have been a bad thing automatically – there are other fancier ways
to move a car around -, it has now turned out that the wheels seem to be there and that this is the way
the car moves.”
Where do we go from here?
So, if it is the Higgs boson that has been discovered, what does that mean for the future? CERN’s own
announcement noted: “Positive identification of the new particle’s characteristics will take
considerable time and data. But whatever form the Higgs particle takes, our knowledge of the
fundamental structure of matter is about to take a major step forward.”
Krassnigg continues his comparison of the Higgs boson with a car to explain what’s next:
“Measurements and data analysis will continue, since physicists still need to find out in the months
and years to come what the wheels are like: everything standard (i.e. as expected) or extra-large rims
or something even more unexpected (perhaps on fire?).”
Just because the Standard Model appears to be validated, doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot more to
discover in the field of particle physics, too, as Schoonderwoerd explains: “The standard model
doesn’t explain gravitation at all. So physicists have been trying to unify the gravitation theory with
the Standard Model in advance models with names like Supersymmetry.” He says that many of the
people investigating these theories hope that accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider will continue
to run at increasing energy levels, uncovering new particles that may explain how gravity works in a
way that fits into the Standard Model.
But how does it affect the rest of us?
This is all very good for theoretical physicists – but will the discovery affect our every day lives? While
it’s impossible to say if new fields of technology will open up as a result of the discovery of the Higgs
boson, Krassnigg points out that “In addition to the beauty of the process of discovery itself, which is
a very rewarding experience, in my opinion the biggest difference to the world we live in are spin-offs
coming from CERN or other high-energy physics laboratories with regard to technology.” Take the
World Wide Web, for example, developed at CERN by Sir Tim Berners Lee. Consider the huge amount
of work done to develop the Large Hadron Collider – that research could well have uses outside the
realm of physics.
Another real-world benefit is people, says Dr Simon George, who is involved in the ATLAS experiment
using the Large Hadron Collider; “The highly trained PhDs who get snapped up by the private sector,
and enthused children who will become our scientists in the future.”
Whether or not we see technological advancements as a direct result of today’s announcement,
perhaps that’s not important. Krassnigg is hugely positive about the wider effect of the work behind it.
“I consider these latest results an excellent and reassuring confirmation of our (meaning we as a
global society) target-oriented ability to make use of and invest in science and technology. In
particular, a lot of amazing work, time, strategic thinking, skill, and creativity were needed to arrive at
today’s ‘state-of-the-art’ announcement. Congratulations to all who contributed!”
We agree – congratulations – it’s a good day to be a particle physicist
Still Confused About the Higgs Boson?
Read This
GARANCE FRANKE-RUTAJUL 6 2012, 10:20 AM ET
A chance encounter at a July 4 picnic made the latest development in particle physics seem much
more comprehensible. Here's what I learned.
So I was at a July 4 picnic on Wednesday where one of the other guests used to be a physics teacher at
Stuyvesant High School, and he explained this whole Higgs boson thing to me in a way that made it
make about as much sense as it's going to for someone who only took physics in college. And he did
the whole thing without using food metaphors -- molasses, soup, etc. -- which I thought was
impressive.
Basically, it's like this: Sub-atomic particles are either fermions or bosons. Fermions are the things
you learned about in high school physics -- electrons, protons, neutrons and so on -- that share the
quality that you can't have two of them in the same space on an atom. Think of them as the billiard
balls: they can be all over the table, but not in the same space at the same time, and where they go is
determined by the size of the tables. Most of the widely-known fermions are composites made up of
other categories of sub-atomic particles, like quarks(which combine to form protons) and leptons, but
the most important thing to know about them for the purposes of this discussion is that they are
considered the matter particles.
Bosons are different. Bosons have the capacity to share space because they are more like a force than a
thing in the way we normally think of "things" or "particles." And since the normal understanding of
the word particle is that it's a small thing that has matter -- the mote in the sun, rather than the light
itself -- perhaps a better way for lay people to think of bosons is as entities that have effects; they
carry the forces (strong, weak, gravitational or electromagnetic) described by the Standard Model in
physics, making them what physicists callforce-carrying particles.
But if this whole particle-that-lacks-mass thing is still tripping you up, you don't need to use that
word in your own head; bosons lose nothing for our purposes by being thought of as entities, even if
they are still technically particles, which is to say something really small of which other things are
made. Some bosons have mass and some don't. The Higgs boson has a very large mass for a subatomic particle, though of course it is still sub-atomic, which is to say tiny.
There are an array of different kinds of bosons, of which the Higgs boson is only the latest to be
(tentatively) confirmed as existing. Here are some of the other kinds of bosons:
* Gluons. So named -- seriously -- because they help glue quarks together, mass-less gluons carry
the strong force but operate only at close range, like glue, in that glue will stick two adjacent things
together but not attract something from the other side of the room.
* W and Z bosons. W and Z bosons carry the weak force and operate at close range.
* Photons. Photons are mass-less wave-like particles that are the basic building blocks of light and
carry the electromagnetic force.
(Gravitational force is hypothesized to be carried by the graviton boson, but that has not yet been
proven. Gravity is still a bit of a mystery.)
OK, so now to the Higgs boson.
The newly discovered boson thought to be the Higgs boson was measured by the Large Hadron
Collider in Europe, which is a cathedral-sized underground mechanism for creating sub-atomic
collisions that break things down into component parts. Part of why it's been hard to figure out from
the news stories what the Higgs boson is is there are actually three Higgs things under discussion: 1)
the Higgs field, 2) the Higgs boson and 3) the Higgs mechanism.
*The Higgs field is a quantum field that the Standard Model of physics predicts pervades the universe
and creates drag on particles.
*The Higgs boson is a sub-atomic particle that acts as the intermediary between the Higgs field and
other particles. All fields are mediated by bosons, some of which pop into and out of existence
depending on the state of the field, sort of like how rain drops emerge out of a cloud when it reaches a
certain point. The electromagnetic field that pervades the universe, for example, is mediated by
photons. Finding the Higgs boson would confirm that the Higgs field exists, and that field has long
been postulated as a way of explaining an array of other physical phenomena.
* This interaction between the field, the boson and other particles is the Higgsmechanism. The precise
nature of the mechanism is still being worked out, but it is through its complex interplay of fields and
bosons (Higgs and non-Higgs) that particles acquire mass.
Because the Higgs field was hypothesized to be massless and continuous, and because of the
particular properties of the Higgs boson -- both massive and rapidly decaying -- it was really hard to
observe and measure any individual Higgs bosons -- if, in fact, that's what was measured recently -until the Large Hadron Collider came online with enough force and energy to slam some bosons out of
the Higgs field into a state humans can measure.
Think of it a little like this: by smashing things hard enough, a little bit of the Higgs field got chipped
off into a boson that could be measured before decaying. Sort of like throwing a rock really hard at a
concrete wall -- eventually part of the wall will chip off. In this case, it was like a wall that only threw
off a little bit of dust in response to a major collision, and then scientists were able to tell that the wall
was there because they took a picture of the dust before it blew away. Except in this case the wall is
also continuous and infinite, and invisible, and we all live inside of it, and it's what gives us mass,
which is to say the quality of physical existence.