University of Michigan physicist Gordon Kane offers the following explanation:
Over the past few decades, scientists have developed a successful and well-tested description of our physical world, called the Standard Model of particle physics. It incorporates the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces into a coherent picture and describes all relevant experiments. But one test has not yet been completed: for consistency, and to account for the masses of particles, the theory requires the existence of a new field called the Higgs field¿which is analogous to the familiar electromagnetic field but with new kinds of properties. Just as we learn of electromagnetic fields by detecting their quanta, particles called photons, we hope to learn of the Higgs field by detecting its quanta, called Higgs bosons.
If the Higgs boson (named after British physicist Peter Higgs) were discovered, it would actually be one of the most important experimental discoveries of all time, in large part because of the unique role Higgs physics plays. On one hand, it completes the Standard Model, tying together the successful description of the microscopic physical world, which scientists have sought to understand for many centuries. This description tells us how the physical world works. At the same time, the form the Higgs physics takes points to how the Standard Model can be strengthened and extended to describe not only how the world works but why it works that way. The Higgs boson is important because it is the transition to why. The Higgs boson is also a new kind of matter, the first in a century.
 Image: FERMI NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY TEVATRON PROTON COLLIDER at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., will start looking for the elusive Higgs boson in March 2001. |
There are currently two pieces of evidence that a Higgs boson does exist. The first is indirect. According to quantum field theory, all particles spend a little time as combinations of all other particles, including the Higgs boson. This changes their properties a little in ways that we know how to calculate and that have been well verified. Studies of the effect the Higgs boson has on other particles reveal that experiment and theory are consistent only if the Higgs boson exists and is lighter than around 170 giga electron volts (GeV), or about 180 proton masses. Because this is an indirect result, it is not rigorous proof. Several unknown contributions could, in principle, combine to mimic the appearance of the Higgs. That is, however, very unlikely. More concrete evidence of the Higgs came from an experiment conducted at the European laboratory for particle physics (CERN) using the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider in its final days of operation. That research revealed a possible direct signal of a Higgs boson with mass of about 115 GeV and all the expected properties. Together these make a very convincing¿although not yet definitive¿case that the Higgs boson does indeed exist.
Now, assuming the Higgs boson has indeed been discovered, let's turn to the implications for creating a more fundamental theory of particle physics. I¿ll refer to this fundamental theory as string theory without distinguishing various forms. String theory is formulated in 10 dimensions and has other properties that do not hold in our world. It makes no explicit or testable predictions or explanations, and it has no direct connections to Higgs bosons. Before such connections can happen, we will have to learn how our actual world can emerge from the higher dimensional theory¿and how the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces, and the quarks and leptons, emerge from string theory.
Still, enough is known about string theory that there are some suggestive connections to our world. Most important, string theory seems to require our world to have a property called supersymmetry. And a supersymmetric Standard Model with string theory boundary conditions has Higgs bosons and explains their properties. Whereas the mass of the Higgs boson cannot be calculated in the Standard Model, in the supersymmetric Standard Model the mass can be calculated approximately to be 90¿40 GeV, a range that contains the likely discovered value.
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Add CommentDr. F. Tengelin was quicker than me or more brave than me. I was just thinking of saying the same thing. Let me make his statement more precise. Prof. Steve Weinberg who developed the electro weak theory and shared the Nobel prize with two others is the author of the most authoritative book on quantum field theory. In volume 3 of his book The Quantum Theory of Fields published by Cambridge University Press in 2000 he states on page 192 that the inverse super symmetric unification coupling of all fundamental gauge forces is 17.5. This value is given by his equation 28.2.19. Finding this result scared me quite a bit because I used Prof. El Naschies result which comes to 24.28. This is a large discrepancy. I repeated the calculation again and again but I always found 24.28 and never 17.5. To make things worse Prof. El Naschie noticed immediately that 17.5 must be a miscalculation and said that the exact integer value must be 26. That means 17.5 must be wrong and 24.28 is only an approximation to the exact value which is 26. He said it is obvious that 26 must be correct. He directed me to his paper in Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 35, p. 862 (2008) entitled Non-perturbative super symmetric quantum gravity coupling. I am desperate to know who is right and who is wrong? This result will not affect either the career of a Nobel laureate or the career of a well established professor but it could be devastating for me. I would be extremely grateful to anyone who could help me decide who is right, Prof. Weinberg or Prof. El Naschie. Please send me your answers as quick as possible to the address below.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAyman Elokaby
Dept. of Physics
University of Alexandria
Egypt
Dr. F. Tengelin was quicker than me or more brave than me. I was just thinking of saying the same thing. Let me make his statement more precise. Prof. Steve Weinberg who developed the electro weak theory and shared the Nobel prize with two others is the author of the most authoritative book on quantum field theory. In volume 3 of his book The Quantum Theory of Fields published by Cambridge University Press in 2000 he states on page 192 that the inverse super symmetric unification coupling of all fundamental gauge forces is 17.5. This value is given by his equation 28.2.19. Finding this result scared me quite a bit because I used Prof. El Naschies result which comes to 24.28. This is a large discrepancy. I repeated the calculation again and again but I always found 24.28 and never 17.5. To make things worse Prof. El Naschie noticed immediately that 17.5 must be a miscalculation and said that the exact integer value must be 26. That means 17.5 must be wrong and 24.28 is only an approximation to the exact value which is 26. He said it is obvious that 26 must be correct. He directed me to his paper in Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 35, p. 862 (2008) entitled Non-perturbative super symmetric quantum gravity coupling. I am desperate to know who is right and who is wrong? This result will not affect either the career of a Nobel laureate or the career of a well established professor but it could be devastating for me. I would be extremely grateful to anyone who could help me decide who is right, Prof. Weinberg or Prof. El Naschie. Please send me your answers as quick as possible to the address below.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAyman Elokaby
Dept. of Physics
University of Alexandria
Egypt
IMO Higgs boson doesn't exist in the same way, like distinguished particle responsible for CMBR noise doesn't exist. What does exist is the mixture of CMBR photons with certain power distribution and what we are observing during LHC collisions is such a power distribution too. I'd even expect, the power distribution of quantum fluctuations at quantum scale would mirror the power distribution at cosmological scale in accordance to the dense aether model, AWT.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn this model the observable Universe appears like area of water surface observed with its surface ripples. At the small distance the visibility scope is limited, because surface ripples are dispersing with Brownian noise into underwater. At the large scale the same dispersion occurs, so we can expect the geometric similarity here. The AWT predicts, this distribution should correspond the dodecahedron symmetry, corresponding the most compact, still regular spherical particle packing. At the cosmological scale the power spectrum of quantum fluctuations follows this geometry well, so we can expect the same agreement even at the quantum scale.
I went to college for ever. I made good grades, and i have been following CERN! I have always believed unverifiable that there were, by quantum theory, other universes. Parallel universes. I like Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos" series on NOVA on PBS, but for arguments sake i can see that space is a fluid that can be manipulated! If we create a sensor capability, then we may be able to examine the universe or universes by instruments, and let science, engineering and technology catch up in a million years or so. I state that i feel dark matter is just another faster that light state of matter. Dark matter does not entangle like light! These geometeric patterns may fit the model of a mathematical hypercube?We may have to draw geometeric models from observed patterns and not the other way around. The earth is not a sphere and the gravitational fields may have their own quirky shapes. In this way there may be a GUT model, but with vague commonalities. Fringe knowledge to keep the universe from blowing up! Maybe Einstein was right! We do not have the type of dice GOD has. Our knowledge of our reality is very inadequate! We are just now scratching the cosmic level question on the outer most surfaces! Just our pathetic level of knowledge about the essence of the constituents of life. Our world is full of life, and we are still fundamentally ignorant of it! My statements are general not specific like others comments.
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