the higgs particle - what it is and what it does
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The Higgs particle - what it is and what it does
Reuters 15 hrs ago
REUTERS - By Chris Wickham Scientists at the CERN research centre near Geneva,
Switzerland, on Wednesday unveiled their latest findings in their search for the Higgs
boson, a subatomic particle key to the formation of stars, planets and eventually life after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years
ago.
WHAT IS THE HIGGS BOSON?
The Higgs is the last missing piece of the Standard Model, the theory that describes the basic building blocks of the
universe. The other 11 particles predicted by the model have been found and finding the Higgs would validate the model.
Ruling it out or finding something more exotic would force a rethink on how the universe is put together.
Scientists believe that in the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was a gigantic soup of particles
racing around at the speed of light without any mass to speak of. It was through their interaction with the Higgs field that
they gained mass and eventually formed the universe.
The Higgs field is a theoretical and invisible energy field that pervades the whole cosmos. Some particles, like the photons
that make up light, are not affected by it and therefore have no mass. Others find it drags on them as porridge drags on a
spoon.
Picture George Clooney (the particle) walking down a street with a gaggle of photographers (the Higgs field) clustered
around him. An average guy on the same street (a photon) gets no attention from the paparazzi and gets on with his day.
The Higgs particle is the signature of the field - an eyelash of one of the photographers.
The particle is theoretical, first posited in 1964 by six physicists, including Briton Peter Higgs.
The search for it only began in earnest in the 1980s, first in Fermilab's now mothballed Tevatron particle collider near
Chicago and later in a similar machine at CERN, but most intensively since 2010 with the start-up of the European centre's
Large Hadron Collider.
WHAT IS THE STANDARD MODEL?
The Standard Model is to physics what the theory of evolution is to biology. It is the best explanation physicists have of how
the building blocks of the universe are put together. It describes 12 fundamental particles, governed by four basic forces.
But the universe is a big place and the Standard Model only explains a small part of it. Scientists have spotted a gap
between what we can see and what must be out there. That gap must be filled by something we don't fully understand,
which they have dubbed 'dark matter'. Galaxies are also hurtling away from each other faster than the forces we know
about suggest they should. This gap is filled by 'dark energy'. This poorly understood pair are believed to make up a
whopping 96 percent of the mass and energy of the cosmos.
Confirming the Standard Model, or perhaps modifying it, would be a step towards the holy grail of physics - a 'theory of
everything' that encompasses dark matter, dark energy and the force of gravity, which the Standard Model also does not
explain. It could also shed light on even more esoteric ideas, such as the possibility of parallel universes.
CERN spokesman James Gillies has said that just as Albert Einstein's theories enveloped and built on the work of Isaac
Newton, the work being done by the thousands of physicists at CERN has the potential to do the same to Einstein's work.
WHAT IS THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER?
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The Large Hadron Collider is the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, a 27-km (17-mile) looped pipe that
sits in a tunnel 100 metres underground on the Swiss/French border. It cost 3 billion euros to build.
Two beams of protons are fired in opposite directions around it before smashing into each other to create many millions of
particle collisions every second in a recreation of the conditions a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, when the Higgs
field is believed to have 'switched on'.
The vast amount of data produced is examined by banks of computers. Of all the trillions of collisions, very few are just
right for revealing the Higgs particle. That makes the hunt for the Higgs slow, and progress incremental.
WHAT IS THE THRESHOLD FOR PROOF?
To claim a discovery, scientists have set themselves a target for certainty that they call "5 sigma". This means that there is a
probability of less than one in a million that their conclusions from the data harvested from the particle accelerator are the
result of a statistical fluke.
The two teams hunting for the Higgs at CERN, called Atlas and CMS, now have twice the amount of data that allowed them
to claim 'tantalising glimpses' of the Higgs at the end of last year and this could push their results beyond that threshold.
(Editing by Kevin Liffey and Janet Lawrence)
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