Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, have announced the observation of a new particle widely thought to be the elusive Higgs boson.
Announced via a live two-way video link to the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Melbourne, the result is the most significant finding in particle physics for decades and is potentially capable of solving a long-standing mystery concerning the origin of mass.
All matter in the universe is ultimately composed of subatomic particles, and the hugely successful Standard Model of particle physics mathematically describes what these particles are and how they interact.
The physicists of the 1960s knew most of the details, but found that any attempt to give particles a non-zero mass broke the theory.
As any personal trainer will tell you, mass is a fact of life, and it was not long before a handful of physicists developed an elegant solution: if the universe is filled with a particular quantum field, particles can interact with it to gain mass.
One way to envision this is to consider a small ant – it has little or no intrinsic mass and may thus be called massless; however, should this ant walk through some treacle, it feels a great inertia from its interaction with it.
Our particles have the same experience, except that some of them feel the treacle more strongly than others and are hence heavier. This “background of particle treacle” was christened “the Higgs field” after Peter Higgs, a key proponent of the idea, and experimental physicists commenced a 50-year journey to obtain conclusive evidence of the field’s existence.
By smashing particles together at high energy in giant colliders, scientists aimed to produce a particle associated with the field known as the Higgs boson, recognisable through the particular pattern of signals it would induce in giant detectors buried deep underground.
The quest for the Higgs boson has involved decades of hard labour from thousands of physicists, engineers, and computer scientists, and is the last piece of the puzzle required to complete the Standard Model.
That quest may now be over. Two experiments at the LHC at CERN, Geneva, have seen strong enough evidence for a Higgs-like particle to declare a formal discovery of something new and both are seeing similar signals.
Produced in the collision of high energy protons at the foot of the Jura mountains, the new particle has a mass of roughly 125 “gigaelectronvolts” and has been seen to decay into a variety of other particles, with the pattern of these decay products being broadly consistent with the precisely calculated signatures of the Higgs.
Physicists worldwide have greeted the news with a mixture of excitement, delight, astonishment and, most typically for the most sceptical profession on Earth, a good deal of head-scratching. Is the new particle really the boson predicted by the Standard Model, or is it a yet more exotic version?
Theoretical physicists have worked for years on theories that may one day supercede the Standard Model, and many of these theories predict more than one Higgs boson or a Higgs boson that would decay differently. The LHC has not yet produced enough Higgs bosons to definitely answer these questions, but the precision of the measurements will increase over the year as the LHC collects more data.
For now, many are speculating that the particle may indeed be an exotic Higgs rather than the common garden variety – a result that would be as popular as it would be earth-shattering.
As the champagne glasses are cleared from the tables of the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, those not lucky enough to attend ICHEP are watching Melbourne, where the details of the new results will be presented and discussed this weekend.
This international focus on Melbourne occurs at a time when Australian particle physics is enjoying a significant increase in funding thanks to the creation of a new Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Particle Physics, home to many physicists – including this author.
While the experimental researchers in this centre continue to make leading contributions to Higgs searches at the LHC, Australian theoreticians are sharpening their minds and pencils to spear the correct explanation should the Higgs prove a trickier beast than first thought.
Further reading:
- Higgs boson announcement – expert reaction
- Explainer: the Higgs boson particle
- Physicists confident they have observed ‘God particle’
- First glimpse of the Higgs boson – how to interpret CERN’s announcement
- 95% chance ‘God particle’ statements are being misread by the media
- Is the Large Hadron Collider a time machine?
- Explainer: Standard Model of Particle Physics
Ettore Greco
logged in via Facebook
The Progressive Science of Wavevolution reveals the existence of One God as it was not possible until now for Religions and traditional science.
Read moreWavevolution shows how the energy movement in atoms and in waves is identical.
Thus, the Creation is revealed by one same movement.
We can now define this behavior as One Law, or One Direction or also One Will since It remains unchanged from the beginning.
The source of attraction between two opposite and complementary elements is the same Law or…
Andrea Young
Master Data Analyst
"Moreover, the same science indicates that from the energy of this Single Point (already composed also by atoms) the whole Universe was created."
I believe this statement is incorrect.
Peter Bruce
Software Engineer
Why must there be a reason for the universe?
Observe "is" then work on "how?"
That's my understanding of science.
Danny Hoardern
Analyst Programmer
The point is we're discovering more - just as once we thought the earth was flat.
We're not, however, discovering more about the existence of a God ("God particle" anecdotes aside*).
I find it easier to believe that the universe has been in existence for an infinite amount of time (expanding and contracting), rather than having a God that has been in existence for an infinite amount of time AND creating everything (are there any theories postulating how God created everything?).
I'm not bashing…
Read moreJack OG
Engineer
"We can now define this behaviour as One Law, or One Direction or also One Will"
--Its true Ettore, the way we view the universe is truly being reshaped by the amazing behaviour of 'One Direction' - I just can't get enough of their progressive beats and catchy lyrics!
haha, but more seriously, if one is to use physics to prove a point, one must at least understand the definitions and fundamentals a little better..
"the Universe that had one beginning... not caused by Humankind" -- since…
Read moreCraig Savage
Professor of Theoretical Physics at Australian National University
Perhaps something has been forgotten in the excitement about the Higgs discovery showing the wondrous power of theoretical prediction.
That something is the fact that the mass of everyday matter is well understood without any appeal to the Higgs field. The Higgs field really only explains the mass of the W and Z particles. And it is only part of the story of the masses of quarks and electrons.
However the vast majority of the mass of atoms, which make up everyday matter, comes from the confinement of quarks and gluons in the packets of energy called protons and neutrons. These packets of energy E have mass m by virtue of E = m ( c squared ), rewritten as m = E / ( c squared ).
I don't see that the Higgs has anything much to do with it. Atomic masses wouldn't change much even if the quarks had zero mass, like gluons.
Peter Ormonde
Peter Ormonde is a Friend of The Conversation.
Farmer
Thanks for this simple explanation... I can almost understand this.
I am just left marvelling at the cleverness of our theoretical physicists and maths wallahs to anticipate and predict this stuff and then to track it down in the flesh.
But one thing I'll absolutely guarantee - it'll be much more complicated and raise a whole raft of new quandaries to be explored. Some of you humans are really very clever indeed. Well done.
Peter Sommerville
Scientist & Technologist
A truly lovely example of scientific method at work. But personally I will wait a bit longer before celebrating to much - after all they have not really discovered the Higgs Boson yet. Just indications of a like minded particle. I sometimes wonder, given the fact that the LHC cost $10B, whether or not the pressure to demonstrate its value might impact upon the way the experimental results are being presented. Apart from this natural cynicism, I think we can all agree that a little more work is needed yet. I look forward to it - it wil be truly satisfying to see experimental validation of theoretical predictions.
Yuri Pannikin
Director
I loved Landsberg's comment on RN breakfast (precis):
"We're not sure if we have discovered 'the Higgs Boson', 'a Higgs Boson', or something quite different."
Cool! I thought you guys were supposed to be quantitatively precise? But then, that's particle physics for you.
Iain Stewart
Associate Professor, Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University
Ah - the universe from the standpoint of treacle!
Babu G. Ranganathan
logged in via Facebook
DOES 'GOD PARTICLE' EXPLAIN UNIVERSE'S ORIGIN? Just google the title to access this popular Internet article of mine.
The Higgs boson does not create mass from nothing. What it does is convert energy into mass. Again, the universe had a beginning. It is not eternal because it does not have the ability to have sustained itself eternally. All scientists believe that the universe (time, mass, and space had a beginning from nothing).
Atheistic scientists believe that the beginning of the universe…
Read more