Image: Thomas Fuchs
When physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of a new particle on July 4, they did not call it “the Higgs boson.” This was not just the typical caution of scientists. It also signified that the announcement comes at a profound moment. We are at the end of a decades-long theoretical, experimental and technological odyssey, as well as at the beginning of a new era in physics.
The search for this particle grew out of a single phrase in the 1964 paper by physicist Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. At the time, what we now call the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes all known elementary particles, was only just starting to coalesce. The Standard Model makes hundreds of testable predictions and, in the decades since its inception, has been proved right every time. The Higgs boson was the last remaining piece of the puzzle, tying together all the known particles of matter (fermions) and the carriers of the forces acting on them (bosons). It paints a compelling picture of how the subatomic world works, but we do not yet know if this picture is just part of a larger canvas.
The Standard Model is based in part on electroweak symmetry, which unites electromagnetism and the weak force. But the particles that carry those forces have very different masses, showing that the symmetry is broken. Theorists were left to explain the divergence of forces. In 1964 three separate papers—by Higgs, by François Englert and Robert Brout, and by Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagen and Tom Kibble—in our journal, Physical Review Letters, showed that a ubiquitous quantum ocean called a spin-0 field could accomplish the symmetry breaking. Higgs mentioned that this ocean had waves that correspond to a new particle—the boson that came to bear his name.
This particle, key to the Standard Model, has been arguably the hardest to find—it required generations of ever bigger colliders to produce a sufficient number of sufficiently energetic collisions. Yet completing the Standard Model hardly closes the book on particle physics. The discovery of the Higgs may in fact point the way to what lies beyond the realm of this venerated theory.
Experimenters still need to verify that the new particle is a spin-0 Higgs boson. Next, they must test how the Higgs interacts with other particles to high precision. At this writing, its couplings do not quite match predictions, which could be just a statistical fluctuation or a sign of some deeper effect. Meanwhile experimenters have to keep taking data to see whether more than one Higgs boson exists.
These are important tests because theorists have constructed many hypothetical models that put the Standard Model in a broader framework, and many of these predict multiple bosons or deviations from the usual couplings. The models include extra fermions, extra bosons and even extra dimensions of space. The most studied broader framework is supersymmetry, which hypothesizes that each known fermion has an undiscovered partner boson and that each known boson has an undiscovered partner fermion. If supersymmetry is correct, there is not one Higgs boson but at least five. So we are just beginning to explore a new realm.
This article was originally published with the title The Import of the Higgs Boson.
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20 Comments
Add CommentHiggs particle is supposed to endow mass to all the matter particles. Mass of matter particles vary considerable in range from few eVs for nutrinos to large GeVs to down and up quarks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHiggs boson endows mass to what? Matter particles? But before endowment of mass, can any particles be really treated as matter particles? What was the nature of those particles which gained mass due to interaction with Higgs Field? What differentiated those particles, before endowment of mass, from energy particles?
Why Higgs Field is a quantized field with mass of 125 GeV? An unquntized field could endow different masses to various matter particles depending upon some pre-determined factors. What is the process or mechanism which propels Higgs Boson with mass of 125 GEV to endow different matter particles to have variable masses in too wide range?
There are nos. of conceptual issues of aforesaid and other types which somehow do not seem to have some satisfactory solution Any theory or model whether Standard Model or others shall remain incomplete unless above conceptual issues are resolved
Very good questions. As Einstein said all there is in the universe is energy. When forced to speed of light all matter turns into energy again. Light becomes matter again when a force, which is called gravity, acts upon it. In other words, all other forces are some other variations of gravity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscan it be this simple?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo matter particle can be accelerated to speed of light. Of course matter gets converted to energy in the process of fission and fusion ( not by speeding matter to speed of light) and energy also gets converted to matter, but the physical phenomenon behind these conversions are yet not fully understood. Standard Model or any other model/theory does not provides a complete answer to the issue as to why energy particles ( if matter really comes from energy) gets converted to matter particles having mass scattered in the wide range. One solution could be that before endowment of mass by Higgs Field, there are energy droplets with varying energy content in each droplet. One could assume that Higgs Field endows mass to energy droplets in proportion to the energy content in each droplet. But any explanation on such assumption shall amount to getting rid of the issue from the present paradigm and taking up to some higher paradigm since an obvious issue shall arise: what caused the creation of energy droplets with energy content spread in a very very large range?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParticle physicist Jon Butterworth commented in Nature last week:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If one assembles the standard model without fine-tuning some parameters, quantum effects mean that the Higgs boson's mass should grow and end up near the Planck scale. This is clearly wrong, and it hints at gaps in the theory."
A miss by 17 orders of magnitude, or 100,000,000,000,000,000, is a fairly big miss.
Once again, Discrete Scale Relativity comes to the rescue. DSR shows how to calculate the appropriate gravitational coupling factor that applies within atomic and subatomic systems. This leads to a corrected Planck mass of 674.8 MeV (which is close to the proton mass) instead of 10^19 GeV. In the DSR analysis, the standard model is only off by 2 orders of magnitude instead of a whopping 17 orders of magnitude.
Discrete Scale Relativity's rescaling of General relativity also allows one to:
Understand the fine structure constant
Resolve the vacuum energy density crisis
Retrodict subatomic particle masses (inc. electron)
Understand the meaning of Planck's constant.
Relevant papers are available for free at the arXiv.org preprint/papers archive.
Before particle physicists design their next huge collider, and before the public is asked to pay for it, they might study Discrete Scale Relativity a bit. It changes everything. It is a truly new and unified paradigm for understanding nature.
It makes 12 definitive predictions which are listed in a paper posted to Independent.Academia.edu, and 3 have already been verified.
Robert L. Oldershaw
www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
Discrete Scale Relativity
Talking about energy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnergy is a measure of change in a system. Because of energy’s temporal definition, it’s tied to the time dimension. If you freeze time, energy has no meaning. It never stands alone as a substance, so things are never made of energy. There is no such thing as pure energy. Things don’t get mixed with it. Things don’t condense out of it. Energy is a bit like money – except instead of abstracted value, we are talking about a high level concept of abstracted change in a system.
As an example, let’s think about the nature of a battery. The battery doesn’t really store a substance called energy. It simply has the potential to generate a certain amount of standardized changes using some specific physical mechanism (like chemical reactions). Different flavors of reactions have differing amounts of standardized change they produce. In the case of the battery, we make use of these changes to drive the events of the system.
If you haven't seen it, I recommend http://www.universetoday.com/96122/whats-a-higgs-boson-anyway/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom an amateur with very limited understanding (but lots of interest!) I found your link very educational. Thank you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNew era is yet to come, in particle physics. This is just a starting point. Research work in LHC is pivotal to future particle physics. MANY QUESTIONS are STILL waiting for the answers and proof, such as:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1.who is the maker of Boson and other sub-atomic particles, in the Universe?
2.Why Universe came into existence?
3.What was the immediate need to make Universe and by WHOM?
4.How Energy originated and why?
5.Is there the existence of SUPREME AUTHORITY which is controlling all these events going-on?
Discovery of Higgs Boson particle is a GREAT ACHIEVEMENT before the World Community; BUT, it will take many more years to end the story about the “UNIVERSE- why, how and by whom?”
My SALUTE and BEST WISHES to the GREAT SCIENTISTS engaged in the research work of Higgs Boson paricle. This discovery is very important and will give birth to more branches in particle physics.
Regards.
My above 05 questions before scientific community were accepted as a comment on an article by Tom Wells of Foreign and Commonwealth office blog [ of UK government ]; please visit at http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/science-innovation-network-india/2012/07/06/higgs-boson-an-international-success-with-indian-ingredients/#comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPrabhat - You seem to imply that the ultimate goal of research at the LHC is to prove the existence and needs, desires - of some sort of deity. Starting a question about the beginning of our known universe with "who" is to make the largest assumption possible. "What was the immediate need to make the universe?" - I'm sorry but this is one of the more useless and nonsensical questions I've ever heard, and see the footnote at HUGE assumption. My best advice is for you to watch the Wizard of OZ, and click your heels together 3X, because you just may be dreaming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) Why does there need to be a "who?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2) If by "why Universe came into existence" you mean what was the intent, verses simply how it happened, then I would wonder why you find it necessary to imagine some intent had a reason for it to happen.
3) This question has the same problem as number 2.
4) How energy originated might be interesting to discover, but the "why" part of your question on its origin again has the same problem as #2 and #3 above. You are inserting an imagined intelligence into the scenario in order to have a "who" that could then have an intention or a "why" for the process... when most likely all that is totally unnecessary... often things just happen.
5) And when the likelyhoods and/or evidence of continued science makes it more and more apparent there is no (all caps? really?) SUPREME AUTHORITY behind any of this, will you accept the evidence or even before that, the huge likelihood of there being no magic power/intelligence behind everyhing, or will you continue to dismiss it because you favor believing what you want to believe?
Dear dtchemist, i do not need any advise; thanks for your reply. My questions are not useless and nonsense BUT scientific; my questions are not impossible to answer; i think the level of research going on will give answers to my questions at cumulative rate. Hoping our scientists will be able to find the answers of my questions, in our life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear dtchemist, please try to accept the things with broader intelligence; Best wishes.
Dear tharriss, thanks for your reply. The historical records for major discoveries shows that imagination give birth to the reality or in more easy way, imagination intelligence give birth to the hypothesis then to the reality which was thought. My questions are NOT "JUST ASKED" or BASELESS or NONSENSE. My all 05 questions are reasoned and scientific. Only thoughts and imagination give birth to the future scientific discoveries. Take my questions with a broad thought. Thanks tharriss and best wishes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you ever noticed that nature is hierarchically organized. The observable part of the cosmos is composed of galaxies, which are composed of stars, which are composed of atoms, which are composed of particles?
Have you also noticed that fractal self-similarity is ubiquitous in nature. For example, the branching of trees, rivers, circulatory systems, internet connections, neuronal connections, etc. Or for example, the distributions of galaxies, the distributions of stars within galaxies, or the distributions of atomic systems within stellar plasmas, etc. Or for example, the self-similar structures of clouds, mountains, cratering, turbulence, electric discharges, etc. In fact it is difficult to find fundamental phenomena in nature that do not involve any self-similar stucture or processes.
Probably you have noticed some or all of this.
Now ask yourself: "Where in current theoretical physics do you find these fundamental properties described?
Not in string theory, not in supersymmetry, not in supergravity, not in the standard model of particle physics, and most obviously not in WIMPy standard cosmology. The current models of theoretical physics seem to be totally blind to these basic properties of nature.
The one theory wherein these fundamental properties of nature are confronted and form the foundation of a new self-similar cosmological paradigm is the theory of Discrete Scale Relativity (...www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw).
We are trying to understand nature, aren't we?
I recommend
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.nature.com/news/higgs-triumph-opens-up-field-of-dreams-1.10970
including the expandable inset, "What is the Higgs?"
There's no 'reality show' cafeteria noise to contend with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen did theoretical physicists lose interest in studying the observable physical world and become enthralled with the imaginary world of strings, magnetic monopoles, sparticles, extra-dimensions, WIMPs, Boltzmann brains, multiverses, infinite copies of Brian Greene, etc.?
The hope is with experimental and observational research, but can it keep up with the fecundity and mutability of the postmodern fizzics?
I am writing to the breadth of scholars, from Vinodkomasrsehgal, to rloldershaw, and others...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour open approach is encouraging to the possiblities before pyhsics and humanity and the healthy impacts it will manifest. Please review my webpage: www.otterthink.wordpress.com for ideas about Energy, and the open playing field we are engaged in. This is no little task, as it is infinite in scope, but the virtues of your ideas, speak well for the hope of physics and the open minds that will bridge the breech of importance - someday - that will change the world. That change will not be through the leadership of politicians, but through scientists, such as yourselves...
Cheers Ladies and Gentlemen,
Russ
my friend , if a black hole is a result of the loss of all knowledge then , would it not slowly disipate from loss of gravitational energy ? if there is no limit to the universe then there is no way for it to fall back into a new big bang . if a universe was to fall back into itself then would there not be such heat and pressure as to fuse any matter that would be needed to give inercial properties to this begoining new universe , thus render the attempt futile . so of neccesity , can only have been this one universe . most people believe in god and so it could be safe to say that he is the progenator , but boy is it fun trying to figure out how he did it .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisif you take the bang theory at face value , then what was the nature of the energy ? was it by its interaction with the singulary warped/morphed/denigraded ? was the singulary likewise changed-or was it like a bag of bb's ? are those bb's the higgs ? all current particles are made up of energy or energy/matter , but there is an underlying charge , on the sublevel there is a large amount of space and at the beginning there was no ocean , so are we judging the past by the present so, there by giving the past our attributes ?
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