Scientists believe that the Higgs boson is the building block of the
universe and the particle that gives all matter its mass -- but how, and
why is it important? CNN explains.
FULL STORY
A proton-proton collision produced
in the Large Hadron Collider shows characteristics in line with the
decay of a Higgs boson particle.
(CNN) -- Scientists say they have proven the existence of the Higgs boson -- a never-before-seen subatomic particle long thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe.
Speaking with CERN's Director-General
The 'God particle': Have we found it?
The Number: Search for the God Particle
Why is the 'God particle' a big deal?
October 8, 2013 -- Updated 1355 GMT (2155 HKT)
Scientists Francois Englert and Peter Higgs won this year's Nobel Prize
in Physics to on Tuesday for their 1964 postulation of the existence of
the Higgs boson. FULL STORY
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WHAT IS HIGGS BOSON?
What is the Higgs boson and why is it important?
October 8, 2013 -- Updated 1213 GMT (2013 HKT)
A proton-proton collision produced
in the Large Hadron Collider shows characteristics in line with the
decay of a Higgs boson particle.
HIDE CAPTION
Searching for the 'God particle'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Scientists say they've found new evidence the Higgs boson exists
- The so-called "God particle" is thought to be a building block of the universe
- The theoretical particle is key to understanding how universe works, experts say
Since 2012 researchers have made great strides in the hunt for the so-called "God particle" at the Large Hadron Collider
in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists at the CERN particle physics
laboratory are looking for particles that slip into existence when
subatomic particles crash into one another at high energies.
Experts say finding the
elusive particle would rank as one of the top scientific achievements of
the past 50 years -- a view proved on Tuesday when Francois Englert and
Peter Higgs, the two physicists who predicted almost 50 years ago that
the particle existed, won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
What is the Higgs boson?
The Standard Model of
particle physics lays out the basics of how elementary particles and
forces interact in the universe. But the theory crucially fails to
explain how particles actually get their mass.
Speaking with CERN's Director-General
The 'God particle': Have we found it?
The Number: Search for the God Particle
Why is the 'God particle' a big deal?
Particles, or bits of
matter, range in size and can be larger or smaller than atoms.
Electrons, protons and neutrons, for instance, are the subatomic
particles that make up an atom.
Scientists believe that the Higgs boson is the particle that gives all matter its mass.
Experts know that
elementary particles like quarks and electrons are the foundation upon
which all matter in the universe is built. They believe the elusive
Higgs boson gives the particles mass and fills in one of the key holes
in modern physics.
How does the Higgs boson work?
The Higgs boson is part of a theory first proposed by Higgs and others in the 1960s to explain how particles obtain mass.
The theory proposes that
a so-called Higgs energy field exists everywhere in the universe. As
particles zoom around in this field, they interact with and attract
Higgs bosons, which cluster around the particles in varying numbers.
Imagine the universe
like a party. Relatively unknown guests at the party can pass quickly
through the room unnoticed; more popular guests will attract groups of
people (the Higgs bosons) who will then slow their movement through the
room.
The speed of particles
moving through the Higgs field works much in the same way. Certain
particles will attract larger clusters of Higgs bosons -- and the more
Higgs bosons a particle attracts, the greater its mass will be.
Higgs boson is the last missing piece of our current understanding of the most fundamental nature of the universe.
Physicist Martin Archer
Physicist Martin Archer
Why is finding the Higgs boson so important?
While finding the Higgs
boson won't tell us everything we need to know about how the universe
works, it will fill in a huge hole in the Standard Model that has
existed for more than 50 years, according to experts.
"The Higgs boson is the
last missing piece of our current understanding of the most fundamental
nature of the universe," Martin Archer, a physicist at Imperial College
in London, told CNN.
"Only now with the LHC
[Large Hadron Collider] are we able to really tick that box off and say
'This is how the universe works, or at least we think it does'."
"It's not the be all and
end all -- but in terms of what can we say practically about the world
and how the world is, it actually tells us a lot."
Gordon Kane, director of
the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, added that finding
evidence of the Higgs boson would be a "very wonderful success of
science and of people for four centuries."
Why is the Higgs boson called the "God particle?"
The popular nickname for
the elusive particle was created for the title of a book by Nobel Prize
winning physicist Leon Lederman -- reportedly against his will, as
Lederman has said he wanted to call it the "Goddamn Particle" because "nobody could find the thing."
"'God particle' is a
nickname I don't really like," says Archer. "It's nothing to do with
religion -- the only (theoretical) similarity is you're seeing something
that's a field that's everywhere, in all spaces."
How are scientists searching for the Higgs boson?
For the past 18 months
scientists have searched for the Higgs boson by smashing protons
together at high energy in the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
If we don't see [Higgs], it means the universe is more complicated than we thought.
Physicist Martin Archer
Physicist Martin Archer
Inside the LHC, which is
located 328 feet underground in a 17-mile tunnel and is the most
powerful particle accelerator ever built, high speed proton collisions
generate a range of even smaller particles that scientists sift through
in search of a signal in the data suggesting the existence of the Higgs
boson.
"You're just hoping that somewhere in these collisions that you see something ... some sort of a statistical bump," says Archer.
So Higgs bosons exist,
but are elusive, popping up and then disappearing again quickly. It
means, says Archer, that scientists at the LHC are only able to observe
their decaying remnants.
Information from CNN Wires and CNN's Light Years blog was used in this report.
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