An example of simulated data modeled for the CMS particle detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The Higgs boson, first theorized in 1964 by Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, is an elementary particle that explains why some particles have mass and others do not (1).
The way in which the Higgs boson imbues elementary particles with mass can be described metaphorically with a snowy field. Imagine the various parties that might be present around this snowy field: a skier, a person in snow boots, and a bird flying overhead (1).
The individual snowflakes represent the Higgs boson particles, and the aggregate snow represents the Higgs field. Interaction with the Higgs field is what gives particles their mass. The skier meets little resistance with the snow, and represents an electron, which barely interacts with the Higgs field, and thus has little mass. The snow slows the person with snow boots a little more. He represents quarks, which constitute protons and neutrons that interact more with the Higgs field and thus have more mass. The bird isn’t slowed by the snow, and mirrors a photon that doesn’t interact with the Higgs field, and is thus massless. Essentially, the Higgs boson and the Higgs field have been called “cosmic molasses” (1).However, the reason that some particles interact more with the Higgs field than others is currently unknown (3).
Colloquially dubbed “the God particle” by Leon Lederman, the former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois, the particle thought to be the Higgs boson was tentatively announced in July 2012 and confirmed in March 2013 at the Moriond Conference in Italy (1, 2). The Higgs boson was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. At this facility, teams of more than 3000 physicists used the LHC to collide thousands of trillions of particles, hoping that somewhere in the “subatomic rubble” they would find evidence of the Higgs boson (1, 3, 4). Physicists at CERN detected the Higgs boson by searching through the subatomic rubble for fragmented decay of the particle. Since the Higgs boson is highly unstable, it quickly decays into various other subatomic particles. The physicists waited for the amount of these decayed particles to be statistically significant before declaring the discovery of the new particle (1). Scientists use sigma levels to show the degree of their certainty and confidence in a result. The CERN physicists said that the sigma level for the discovery of the Higgs-like particle was over five, meaning that statistically, there was a one-in-a-million chance that the Higgs particle was a fluke (5).
However, other properties of the Higgs boson, like its spin and parity, are not as definite. Spin, in a quantum environment, denotes a sort of angular momentum. It is an intrinsic quantum property of elementary particles that doesn’t exist on the human scale (6). Parity has to do with the way a physical process occurs when the coordinate system in which it occurs is switched – in other words, whether or not something remains the same when it is inverted in a mirror (7). Elementary particles are divided into many groups, some of which are known as the bosons. The bosons have certain characteristic spin values, where other particles, called fermions, have different characteristic spin values. The Higgs boson is thought to have a spin of 0 and a positive parity.
The discovery of the Higgs boson has several implications, primarily for theoretical physics. First and foremost, the discovery of the new boson will explain the origin of mass. Then, the Higgs boson will complete theories known as the Standard Model, the sovereign theory of particle physics, and Supersymmetry, which posits that every known particle as a partner with slightly different characteristics. The Higgs boson is also expected to explain the relationship between electromagnetic forces and the force responsible for radioactive decay. Finally, the Higgs boson is of some economic consequence, in that its discovery helps to validate the $10 billion cost of the Large Hadron Collider (8).
References
1 Dennis Overbye, Chasing the Higgs Boson (6 April, 2013). Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/science/chasing-the-higgs-boson-how-2-teams-of-rivals-at-CERN-searched-for-physics-most-elusive-particle.html?view=introduction&_r=0
2 Alex Knapp, CERN Now Certain It Has Discovered the Higgs Boson (6 April, 2013). Available At: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/03/16/cern-now-certain-it-has-discovered-the-higgs-boson/
3 The Higgs Boson (6 April, 2013) Available at: http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/higgs.html
4 How does the Higgs Particle give things mass? (6 April, 2013) Available at: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/03/how-does-higgs-particle-give-things-mass/
5 Ker Than, Scientists Increasingly Confident They’ve Found the Higgs Boson (6 April, 2013). Available at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130315-higgs-boson-lhc-particle-physics-science/
6 Electron Spin (6 April, 2013). Available at: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/spin.html
7 Paul Forman, Parity: What’s not Conserved? (6 April, 2013). Available at: http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Parity/parity.html
8 Clara Moskowitz, Top 5 Implications of Finding the Higgs Boson (6 April, 2013). Available at: http://www.livescience.com/17433-implications-higgs-boson-discovery-lhc.html