What’s the Higgs Boson, and Why Do We Care About It?
Like most brilliant discoveries there first must be a question. Mendeleev and Einstein
were presented a problem, a missing piece, and with that they created a question. With that
question in mind, a hypothesis, and often, a belated answer are formed. Peter Higgs, an
English born theoretical physicist, came up with an answer to Physicists’ most salient question:
“Where do particles get their mass”? Unlike Mendeleev and Einstein, Higgs’s work was not
over. His question had been answered but not proven.
To understand how Higgs solved his question, it’s essential to first understand the most
elemental model of physics, the Standard Model of particle mix. The standard model explains
how the building blocks of matter interact, the building blocks of matter are particles, particles
are made up of subatomic particles. These subatomic particles are split into two groups:
leptons, and quarks. The leptons and quarks are the further split into generations, the
difference between each generation is the mass of the subatomic particles within it. Generation
one consists of the lightest of the particles, and all stable matter in the universe can be found in
generation one. So, even though physicist were capable of telling their audience that
generations were split by mass, they were incapable of explaining why certain particles had
their given mass.
Other holes are also present in the Standard Model. The four forces at work in the
universe are strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational. All can be found within the
Standard Model except gravitational force. The discovery of the Higgs may help fill the void in
the Standard model. Gravity pulls on things proportional to their mass, so by figuring out the
reason behind a particle's mass, perhaps, gravity can be added into the Standard Model.
So what exactly did Higgs give as his answer to the question of mass? Well, Higgs said
that there was an energy field that all subatomic particles had to interact with. He creatively
named it the Higgs field. The more a particle reacted with the field, the greater its mass would
be. However, sheer size of a particle has nothing to do with its mass, for example, the lightest
of subatomic particles is the electron, while one of the heaviest is the top quark. Although the
mass of the top quark is exponentially larger than that of the electron, their masses are exactly
the same. The Higgs field is made up of billions of Higgs Bosons, just like matter is made up of
millions of particles. With the Higgs field matter has mass, the earth sticks together, and
physicist’s dreams are met, without it, we quite literally would have nothing.
So how did Mr. Higgs prove his findings to be correct? Well, the short answer is he
didn’t. Instead, thousands of physicists from all over the globe came together to create the
biggest machine ever built by human beings, the Large Hadron Collider. At an incredible five
stories tall it took almost 30 years to finish the project.WHEN WAS IT COMPLETED? The LHC
was setup to send information to 100,000 computer all across the globe. The LHC is located in
Geneva Switzerland. It was initially going to be built in the U.S., but Congress decided that
federal taxes could be better spent on other issues.
The LHC has four different sections each with a separate goal in mind. The section
designated to finding the Higgs Boson was called ATLAS. The way the LHC works is it spins
two groups of protons around in separate directions. The protons spin until they are almost at
the speed of light and when they reach this speed they are set to collide together. ATLAS is
built to take a snapshot right when the collision occurs and members of the ATLAS team hope
to find the Higgs Boson, and other undiscovered particles.
After many setbacks, such as a helium explosion, the LHC was set to collide the protons
on July 4th, 2012. The first test was a success, and in a conference meeting a week later the
head scientist at the LHC broke the news to the world: the Higgs Boson had been found!. Mr.
Higgs could finally hang his name up with other great scientist such as Mendeleev and Einstein,
because, unlike many, his opinion became fact.
The cost of the LHC was ten billion dollars - more than the Titanic and the A-bombs
combined. Why would a government spend so much money on a science experiment? There is
no financial gain from the finding of the Higgs, but there are countless of answered questions
and even more newly thought of questions. And there is a new look on how our universe came
to be. The LHC collision is similar to the Big Bang in that physicists can discover how the world
came to be and attempt to understand basic laws of nature. Thanks to the LHC the opening of
door one gave physicists the key to opening an infinite number of other doors.
0
