July 5th 2012.
Yesterday, whilst in kitchen, I could hear news on TV on particle physics and I could hear ‘God particle’ being said repeatedly. Came to living room, though it couldn’t be understood fully then, I got very much intrigued. Today, my curiosity got the better of me and before I knew, I was searching all over the net frantically, what this goddamn news is all about.
And now I’m satisfied to an extent, because I feel like I figured out something about the universe! 🙂 just joking.. 😉
Here is what I learnt so far.
Please mind my language today, I haven’t edited much literature wise. Nevertheless, I haven’t made any grave spelling or grammar mistakes, so hope it all makes sense.
Also I wish to edit this whole rather un-professional article and make it more presentable for my own sake.. hope I won’t get lazy later though.
So..
I’ll try my best to break the whole thing down.. First of all I’ve only studied quantum mechanics and particle physics till 12th, I just read these stuffs because I like them.. So, please do not take my words as from a professional point of view. Nevertheless, I read from reliable places, so I hope I’m not wrongly informed… God knows best.
First things first.
Personally, I think I should foremost say about the origin of the name Boson.
Hence going to basics of physics first:
An atom is basically made up of nucleus and electron running around it.
Nucleus contains protons and neutrons.
There are two types of subatomic particles: Elementary particles(electron) and Composite particles(proton, neutron).
There are mainly two kinds of elementary particles: Fermions and Bosons.
Boson is named after Satyendra Nath Bose, an Indian physicist (1894-1974) who had worked with Albert Einstein, Mary Curie and the likes. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate.
Now how about the name Higgs boson?
The fairy tale goes like this:
In 1962, A Nobel laureate physicist Phlips.W.Anderson proposed the Anderson-Higgs Mechanism (now popularly called as Higgs mechanism) which is basically a mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. But the proposal did not work out an explicit relativistic model until Peter Higgs and some more other physicists developed the relativistic model in 1964. Why is the mass of elementary particles important? Because they are the fundamental objects of quantum field theory. Again why they are so fundamental? Because they’ve no measurable internal structure; which means they’re not composed of other particles (or humans don’t know yet more.)
Peter Higgs, came up with a theory called the Standard Model, for how the universe works. Standard Model theory is the so-far successful theory that explains how fundamental particles interact with the elementary forces of nature. However, the theory was somewhat incomplete: it could not explain how particles in the universe gain their mass.
Higgs’s idea was that the universe is bathed in an invisible field (like a magnetic field). Every particle feels this field—now known as the Higgs field—but to varying degrees.
If a particle can move through this field with little or no interaction, there will be no friction kinda effect, and so, that particle will have little or no mass. If a particle interacts significantly with the Higgs field, so obviously, it will have a higher mass.
The idea of this Higgs field requires the acceptance of a related particle: the Higgs boson.
The Higgs boson is one of the final puzzle pieces required for a complete understanding of the standard model of physics.
Why? Because..
According to the standard model, if the Higgs field didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have our orderly world, where matter is made of atoms, and electrons form chemical bonds. Something gotta hold them together, right? That is Higgs boson. In a Higgsless universe, everything would behave as light does, floating freely and not combining with anything else. In other words: no galaxies, no stars, no planets, no life on Earth.
Why is it such a big deal to prove its existence?
Coz despite the Higgs boson providing a neat explanation in theory, proving its existence has been very difficult. The big giant mean machine called Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Switzerland, has been searching for it but couldn’t find it until now, reason being the undetectable mass range of the Higgs Boson particle.
Finally,
‘God Particle’?? U gotta be kidding me.. 😀
A nobel prize winner physicist Leon Lederman published a book in 1993 called ‘The God Particle: If Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?’. Lederman originally called it Goddamn Particle (bcoz its mystery would be tiring the scientists all over, come on you little particle, show ur face! lol..). But Lederman’s publisher didn’t agree to the word ‘goddamn’ coz of its negativity. And thus it became ‘God particle’; which I don’t agree is the same thing literature wise.. Anyways…
hope i shed some sense.. phew.. tired.. !
maybe write later in more details if needed, i guess.. (i can smell laziness smoking in though)
Till then, may God bless us 🙂
Acknowledgement: About my humble knowledge in Physics, I have to thank three teachers, one is my cousin sister, Hafsa Faisal, who taught me the basics of Physics in the easiest manner. Other is my Ponnamma teacher, who made physics really a fun subject. Third is my most beloved Subadhra teacher, she taught me how to learn and admire the smallest lessons of life. She is someone who is equal to my mother for me… 🙂 I pray from the bottom of my heart, may God bless them all…
Disclaimer : This write-up is subject to editing by myself, if I came to know better information and/or knowledge on the topic. Thanks for reading.
References: wiki, BBC, Nat Geo and random websites. (sorry, cant remember all… sincere regrets.)
P.S. : Fast forward to 2016, I’m still lazy to edit this ! Apologize for the unkept words.
