![]() ![]() Over the next couple of years, scientists will double the data again. Since then, researchers have collected 20 times as much data, which is why they are even more confident that they have found “the” Higgs boson. The LHC began operations in 2011, with the Higgs discovery occurring in 2012. What we will continue to learnįor the next two decades or so, scientists will continue to use the LHC. To achieve that level of understanding, more investigation is necessary. This means that we don’t really understand it at a satisfactory level. It doesn’t arise from underlying principles. On the other hand, the Higgs theory is simply an add-on to the version of the Standard Model with mass-less particles. ![]() (Disclosure: I am one of the co-authors of the two papers describing the boson’s discovery.) How did we do it? Finally, in the summer of 2012, researchers succeeded. It took nearly half a century simply to develop the technology capable of producing Higgs bosons. No Higgs boson (or something equivalent), and the entire theoretical concept was in jeopardy. However, the whole edifice of the Standard Model relied on the Higgs boson being discovered. The Higgs field is an add-on to the Standard Model - a Band-Aid, really - which retained the explanatory power of the model but also gave mass to the smallest building blocks of nature. This prediction could have been the death knell of the theory, but it was saved in 1964, when three different groups of physicists proposed what has become known as the Higgs field - named after Peter Higgs, who was one of the physicists involved in developing the theory. After all, the electron’s mass had been measured and known for decades, and the electron is one of the twelve particles of the standard model. It only worked if all the building blocks of nature had zero mass and, even as the model was being developed, this was known not to be true. The Standard Model was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, and it appeared very promising. Combined with two different types of nuclear forces and electromagnetism, researchers understand why the sun burns and airplanes fly. ![]() Physicists know of yet smaller subatomic particles called quarks, found inside protons and neutrons. Our world is made of atoms, each composed of even smaller protons, neutrons, and electrons. The familiar world of pizza and puppies, tornadoes and sunsets doesn’t require the full power of the Standard Model instead, only a subset is needed. Using merely twelve particles and a few forces, scientists can explain the outcome of all experiments investigating the nature of matter and energy in the subatomic realm. The Standard Model is the most successful theory proposed to describe the nature of the physical world. The theory that describes those building blocks is called the Standard Model, and the Higgs boson was the last component of the theory to be observed. The boson is the observable consequence of the Higgs field, which is an energy field that spans the Universe and gives mass to the smallest known building blocks of nature. For particle physicists, July 4 has another meaning: It’s the birthday of the Higgs boson.Įxactly ten years ago, researchers announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, often popularly referred to as the “God Particle,” after Leon Lederman’s book of the same name. In the U.S., July 4 means celebration - picnics and fireworks and, among the more historically inclined, even a respectful recollection of the nation’s first official step toward independence, nearly two and a half centuries ago. ![]()
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