It is interesting though unusual for a scientist to call a mysterious physical entity as ‘Goddamned’ and then rename it as ‘God Particle’ because it was initially quite elusive and enigmatic. Actually, this is a unique elementary particle that is supposed to account for the mass of almost every other fundamental particle of matter. Peter Higgs (the University of Edinburgh physicist, after whom it is now named), and the Belgian, Francois Englert shared the 2013 Physics Nobel Prize for this great discovery. The existence of such a particle was predicted in the 1960s. However,  its discovery was made in July 2012 at CERN in Geneva (Switzerland). The particle was detected by the Long Hadron Collider (LHC) ATLAS detector and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector, two of the world’s biggest, costliest, and most complex machines. The LHC spans 18 miles across the France-Switzerland border. It creates the ‘Higgs particles’ by accelerating protons (the positively charged nuclei of hydrogen) to nearly the speed of light and smashing them together. This yields a cascade that quickly decays into lighter particles. Higgs particle is the smallest of all elementary particles and is now known as ‘Higgs Boson’. It decays too rapidly to be spotted and was instead identified by detecting decays of these lighter particles.

Higgs Bosons

Boson (named after the Indian physicist S N Bose) is the name given to a family of elementary particles, such as photons (particle of light), that are known to be the carriers of fundamental forces like electromagnetism. On the other hand, the particles, like the (negatively charged) electrons and the protons, belong to the class called Fermions (after the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi). A boson is a “force carrier” that comes into play when particles interact with each other, with a boson exchanging during this interaction. For example, when two electrons interact, they exchange photons.   Hence, a boson can also be described as a wave in a field. In 1960’s it was realized by scientists that fundamental particles of matter do not have mass by themselves. Mass is not an intrinsic attribute of matter. Higgs developed the idea of an all-pervasive ‘field’ (like electric,  magnetic or gravitational field), in which a massless particle could gain mass. The Higgs boson is the fundamental force–carrying particle of the Higgs field, which is responsible for granting other particles their mass.

Higgs Field

The Higgs field is a field of energy that is thought to exist in every region of the universe. It is accompanied by the Higgs boson, which continuously interacts with other particles.  Particles that interact with the field are “given” mass. More massive particles interact more often with the field, while less massive particles interact less with the field. A particle “gaining” mass from the field is the prevented of its ability to travel at the speed of light. Mass itself is not generated by the Higgs field. Creating matter or energy from nothing violates the nature’s laws of conservation. Without the Higgs field, particles would not have the mass required to attract one another and would float around freely at the speed of light.

Mass of Elementary Particles

Higgs  postulated that this (energy) field would give rise to the Higgs boson. It is the interaction of the particles with this Higgs field (or the way they change the field or get changed by them), that lends them mass. Greater the interaction, larger is the mass. Different particles interact with this field in different ways, and that is what gives them different masses. While a photon is a particle that arises from an excited electromagnetic field, the Higgs boson is the particle or “quantized manifestation” that arises from the Higgs field when excited. That field generates mass via its interaction with other particles. Thus, the very weak force carriers should be massless.

From “Goddamned” to “God Particle”.

Higgs’ work supports a model that describes all the (hundreds of) fundamental particles, and the forces (like electromagnetism, gravitation, or nuclear forces), that build up all matter. The Higgs boson exists within the Higgs energy field, that pervades throughout the universe. The Higgs boson is 130 times more massive than a proton . It is chargeless and the only elementary particle with no spin (Spin  is a phenomenon similar to angular momentum). Nobel laureate Leon Lederman wrote a book by the title ‘The Goddamn Particle’ to describe the elusive nature of the Higgs boson. However, he was persuaded by the publishers to go in for the God particle, a name that stuck. Many scientists (including Higgs) did not favor that expression,  because it points to  religious connotations.

Importance of Higgs’ discovery

Higgs work gives us a better understanding of the matter that forms us and everything else. It reveals the birth of the universe, as it determines the nature of the vacuum which filled it at that time. It explains the existence of matter and interactions, and the appearance of the mass of elementary particles. Without the Higgs field, and the Higgs bosons, there would be no atomic elements, no stars, and no life in this universe.  This knowledge became possible due to a very high level of international co-operation in development of new technologies. Very high energies were needed to accelerate particles to almost the speed of light. Unprecedented  computing capabilities were needed to study each of the millions of particle collisions produced every second. The Long Hadron Collider (LHC) was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008. The project had contributions from over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories in more than 100 countries. Contributions from Japan, the USA, India, and  some non-Member States accelerated the process. Many of these technologies are now in use all over the world.    

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