I don't understand. Why the fuss about Higgs Boson?

thestaggy

thestaggy

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This was all over the news yesterday. I had never heard of it before so upon hearing about it I went over to Wikipedia to read up on it. Unfortunately, physics is not my strongest point and as I have no previous understanding or knowledge about the topic (Higgs Boson), I may well have been reading an article written in a foreign language.

Now, is there anybody that can explain;
a) What is Higgs Boson?
b) What does its discovery mean?
c) Does its discovery have any sort of impact on my life/our lives?
 
I'd like to know what process led to the discovery?
How did the experiment work in terms of hardware/software?
 
thestaggy said:
This was all over the news yesterday. I had never heard of it before so upon hearing about it I went over to Wikipedia to read up on it. Unfortunately, physics is not my strongest point and as I have no previous understanding or knowledge about the topic (Higgs Boson), I may well have been reading an article written in a foreign language.

Now, is there anybody that can explain;
a) What is Higgs Boson?
b) What does its discovery mean?
c) Does its discovery have any sort of impact on my life/our lives?
Click to expand...
Ok, it is pretty much very complicated. Even most physicists would need a couple of minutes just to figure out how to parse a sentence on how to describe it.

a) What it comes down to however, oversimplified, is that it is a particle that a theoretical physicist named Peter Higgs proposed to exist, with hugely complicated math, to try and explain why matter and mass came to be. Somewhere a physicist is cringing at my explanation and he is welcome to correct me. But there you go.
b) This discovery means(if it is the Higgs, it's not confirmed yet ;)) that the Standard model of physics is pretty much correct. It also has some other implications, which are to vast to try and answer in a post. It also might bring back talk of the ether! :D. Tesla would be ecstatic! LOL Or not! Higgs fields and all! We'll see.
c) Immmense. It already has! Even if it wasn't discovered at all! You see this WWW thing we're using? Say thanks to CERN for that.
 The search for the Higgs, in a way resulted in My Broadband.co.za coming into existence. How's that for impact? Research and development into seemingly-conceptual sciences(but physical nonetheless) like this is so vast and influential it seems invisible to the everyday man like us. Like space development. But it's there and it's immense, simply because of the supporting technologies it fosters and develops. And you can bet your ass that all that networking, data storage and processing technologies that they developed will find their way to our data centers in a few years too.
 
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Higgs Boson in Layman's Terms For people like me.

thestaggy said:
Now, is there anybody that can explain;
a) What is Higgs Boson?
b) What does its discovery mean?
c) Does its discovery have any sort of impact on my life/our lives?
Click to expand...

I found this article quite useful.

Follow the link to the Guardian and watch the explanatory video.
 
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thestaggy said:
a) What is Higgs Boson?
b) What does its discovery mean?
c) Does its discovery have any sort of impact on my life/our lives?
Click to expand...

I'll let this post from reddit answer you better than I ever could. You might also want to watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj967gED8ys

reddit said:
The Idea:
The Standard Model (the best physics model mankind has) says there should be 12 kinds of fields that compose basically everything.
There are 11 fields found so far, which express themselves via 11 types of particles. These have all been seen.
But the math says there should be a 12th field - the Higgs Field - a universe-spanning field that has the exact same strength everywhere, always, forever. But a particle of its kind has never been seen.
Why are there only 11 eggs in a carton made to hold 12? Let's find the last one.
The Theory:
Particles are events happening in fields. Particle + Field 4eva. Particles are not -solid things-. They can come and go. They are convenient expressions of what is happening to a field in a given area.
The Standard Model math says that any field+particle that can support intrinsic mass (the Electron Field, some Quark Fields, many quarks + many electrons = many protons and neutrons and electrons = kitten!) does so only because it is geared into the Higgs Field.
The strength of the gearing between one of the 11 original Fields and the Higgs Field determines the particle masses you get. This is why some particles have more mass than others. How are the strengths chosen? Who knows!
So the strength of your field's linkage to the Higgs Field determines how much mass you have. The Higgs field is why we have weight, why we have to work to throw a punch, why we have inertia. Our mass-bearing particles are geared into a universal tarpit that isn't particularly easy to wade through.
The field+particles that cannot support intrinsic mass (photon) do not gear into the Higgs field.
The Experiments:
The Higgs Field can be made visible if you aggravate it so much that it spits out a particle of itself. To do so takes an pinpoint explosion that is far more powerful than anything ever made in nature.
That is exactly what the particle accelerators do! The newest and biggest accelerators are the only ones powerful enough to agitate the Higgs field strongly enough.
In a particle accelerator explosion, a Higgs boson (particle!) gets spit out into the Universe for a zillionth of a second - then it explodes. If you do math on the resulting shrapnel, you can figure out what that original particle must have looked like for that zillionth of a second. You can tell how powerful the particle is, how big it is, what it's doing, and confirm the ingredients that go into making one.
Tonight's Punchline:
Scientists are now 99.999999% sure that there can be created a particle of mass 125 GeV that has never been seen before.
Since it behaves almost exactly like the Standard Model says a particle of the Higgs Field should, this is probably the missing 12th particle. Fields that can draw mass, draw their mass from this field.
The Standard Model looks really good. More complicated theories lose. The carton has all 12 eggs. Yay science!
Click to expand...

Just to add to that: the fact that the Standard Model is validated means we don't have to throw out every bit of research ever done on particle physics (a century's worth!) and restart from scratch.
 
thestaggy said:
This was all over the news yesterday. I had never heard of it before so upon hearing about it I went over to Wikipedia to read up on it. Unfortunately, physics is not my strongest point and as I have no previous understanding or knowledge about the topic (Higgs Boson), I may well have been reading an article written in a foreign language.

Now, is there anybody that can explain;
a) What is Higgs Boson?
b) What does its discovery mean?
c) Does its discovery have any sort of impact on my life/our lives?
Click to expand...

To answer b and c, these types of discoveries don't have an immediate impact, but over time they have a significant impact.

The understand of quantum theory is directly responsible for the transistor. No transistor, no electronics, no pc, no internet, no mobile phone. You only have to look at what the internet and mobile phones mean to the modern economy, to see how these types of discoveries can impact the lives of ordinary people.

While its impossible to be specific about what the impact if the discovery of this particle will be(and they arnt 100% sure it's the Higgs Boson, it just looks a lot like it), it will either clarify a lot, or if it turns out to not be the Higgs Boson, which in my view is a more exciting prospect, albeit unlikely, then it points to a whole new direction in physics.
 
Geriatrix said:
Ok, it is pretty much very complicated. Even most physicists would need a couple of minutes just to figure out how to parse a sentence on how to describe it.

a) What it comes down to however, oversimplified, is that it is a particle that a theoretical physicist named Peter Higgs proposed to exist, with hugely complicated math, to try and explain why matter and mass came to be. Somewhere a physicist is cringing at my explanation and he is welcome to correct me. But there you go.
b) This discovery means(if it is the Higgs, it's not confirmed yet ;)) that the Standard model of physics is pretty much correct. It also has some other implications, which are to vast to try and answer in a post. It also might bring back talk of the ether! :D. Tesla would be ecstatic! LOL Or not! Higgs fields and all! We'll see.
c) Immmense. It already has! Even if it wasn't discovered at all! You see this WWW thing we're using? Say thanks to CERN for that.
 The search for the Higgs, in a way resulted in My Broadband.co.za coming into existence. How's that for impact? Research and development into seemingly-conceptual sciences(but physical nonetheless) like this is so vast and influential it seems invisible to the everyday man like us. Like space development. But it's there and it's immense, simply because of the supporting technologies it fosters and develops. And you can bet your ass that all that networking, data storage and processing technologies that they developed will find their way to our data centers in a few years too.
Click to expand...

And Einstein is turning in his grave right about now :)
 
If they can find an anti-higgs they can make things lose their mass, hence making FTL travel possible. [One can dream!]

On a more serious note this is a huge step in our understanding of the Universe and I'm sure lots of other discoveries will sprout from this one.
 
Crusader said:
If they can find an anti-higgs they can make things lose their mass, hence making FTL travel possible. [One can dream!]

On a more serious note this is a huge step in our understanding of the Universe and I'm sure lots of other discoveries will sprout from this one.
Click to expand...

That is why I asked if matter's and anti-matter share the same boson or are there anti-boson's so to speak but did not get an answer yet. I have a feeling that they share boson's so this will negate reaching light speed.

Oh FTL is only possible if you bend space/time. The theoretical speed limit of the universe is "light speed", and you can only obtain that speed if you have zero mass.
 
Elimentals said:
That is why I asked if matter's and anti-matter share the same boson or are there anti-boson's so to speak but did not get an answer yet. I have a feeling that they share boson's so this will negate reaching light speed.

Oh FTL is only possible if you bend space/time. The theoretical speed limit of the universe is "light speed", and you can only obtain that speed if you have zero mass.
Click to expand...

I don't know if there are anti-bosons, but there are definitely particles that have no mass since they don't interact with the 'Higgs-field'. Now if scientist can figure out why and how to duplicate it that would be something that could conceivably pave the road for FTL travel. Heck, imagine if they can someone turn off the mass of something. Even conventional space travel will suddenly become extremely cheap.

[All this is wishful thinking though. I don't know if it's even possible since my physics knowledge is extremely lacking]
 
so basically the kids of the future instead of goldfish will be growing mini universes in their aquariums at home and playing god and whatnot.
 
za1 said:
so basically the kids of the future instead of goldfish will be growing mini universes in their aquariums at home and playing god and whatnot.
Click to expand...

No they will have hoverboards like the ones you see in Back to the future II

only 3 years to go...
 
[video=vimeo;41038445]http://vimeo.com/41038445[/video]
 
I'll tell you what gets me about the Higgs is that particles attain their mass by interacting with the Higgs field. Yet the boson itself is a particle and attains its own mass by interaction with the Higgs field. I can't wrap my head around this circular reasoning. Anyone able to explain it?
 
thestaggy said:
Now, is there anybody that can explain;
a) What is Higgs Boson?
b) What does its discovery mean?
c) Does its discovery have any sort of impact on my life/our lives?
Click to expand...

A) The Higgs boson is the smallest detectable wave in the Higgs field. Interacting with the Higgs field causes particles to acquire mass; without the Higgs field, no particle would have mass. Some particles don't feel the Higgs field at all (photons) and so are massless; some feel it very lightly (neutrinos) and have little mass; ordinary particles feel it strongly.

B) it's discovery means that the LHC wasn't a waste after all

C) gives the guys in the natural sciences forum something new to argue about.
 
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