Higgs Boson
The Higgs boson is a small theoretical particle, which (if it exists) is created by a Higgs field. It is necessary for a set of rules in physics that we call the Standard Model, but it has yet to be found in an experiment. If the results of the work at CERN can not show that the Higgs boson exists, much of our entire understanding of physics will need to be re-written. It is important in the scientific world because many scientists believe that it is responsible for giving mass to all known particles that have mass.
The Higgs boson is hard to produce with current equipment, making it difficult to detect. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is the piece of equipment scientists are now using to try to prove that it exists. These particles are believed to exist for less than a septillionth of a second. The collider will have so much energy that it should be able to make Higgs bosons. Because the Higgs boson has so much mass, it takes a lot of energy to create one.
Higgs bosons obey the conservation of energy, a law which states that no energy is created or destroyed, but instead it is transferred. First, the energy starts out in the gauge boson that interacts with the Higgs field. This energy is in the form of kinetic energy as movement. After the gauge boson interacts with the Higgs field, it is slowed down. This slowing reduces the amount of kinetic energy in the gauge boson. However, this energy is not destroyed. Instead, the energy is converted into mass-energy, which is normal mass that comes from energy. The mass created is what we call a Higgs boson. The amount of mass created comes from Einstein's famous equation E=mc2, which states that mass is equal to a large amount of energy (i.e. 1kg of mass is equivalent to almost 90 quadrillion Joules of energy - the same amount of energy used by the entire world in roughly an hour and a quarter in 2008). Since the amount of mass-energy created by the Higgs field is equal to the amount of kinetic-energy that the gauge boson lost by being slowed, energy is conserved.
Higgs bosons are used in a variety of science fiction stories. It was nicknamed the "god particle" by the media. However, this nickname is not used in the scientific community.
[change] Possible First Sighting
On the 12 December 2011, the two teams at the Large Hadron Collider looking for the Higgs Boson, ATLAS and the CMS announced that they had seen spikes in the data which could represent the Higgs Boson particle,[1] however it is possible that this was just an error.
[change] References
- ↑ Rincon, Paul (13 December 2011). "LHC: Higgs Boson 'may have been glimpsed". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16158374. Retrieved 13 December 2011.
[change] Additional Notes
The Official Website of ATLAS Project, a leading Higgs Boson research project: atlas.ch
| Particles in Physics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Elementary: | Fermions: | Quarks: up – down – strange – charm – bottom – top Leptons: electron – muon – tau – neutrinos |
|
| Bosons: | Gauge bosons: photon – W and Z bosons – gluons | ||
| Composite: | Hadrons: | Baryons: proton – neutron – hyperon | |
| Mesons: pion – kaon – J/ψ | |||
| Atomic nuclei – Atoms – Molecules | |||
| Hypothetical: | Higgs boson – Graviton – Tachyon | ||
