What exactly is the higgs boson particle?

Question

What exactly is the higgs boson particle?

Answer 1

No it incredibly is a hypothetical particle it is assumed to grant issues mass. no longer something to do with god or faith in any way. Leon Lederman's e book grow to be initially titled "The Goddamned Particle". The editor dropped the "damned" in worry of offending human beings. Lederman authorized the exchange because of the fact, like god to theists, the particle is considerable and elusive. The jury continues to be out on whether the particle got here upon is definitely the Higgs Boson. "we've a discovery," Heuer mentioned on the seminar. "we've noted a clean particle consistent with a Higgs boson." -- extra analyze is mandatory to make specific what the got here upon particle relatively is. as an occasion, nonetheless the communities are specific the hot particle has the right mass for the estimated Higgs boson, they nevertheless could verify whether it behaves because of the fact the particle is understood to act—and hence what its function interior the foundation and upkeep of the universe is.

Answer 2

It is an as yet unobserved theoretical messenger particle that tells other particles to behave as though they were mass. We hope to actually observe them once the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near CERN Swtizerland begins its planned experiments.



Once we have the LHC in operation, we will be able to produce energies approaching that of the big bang, when all forces were unified as one force. Not to worry, these are scaled down energies, not the whole enchalada; but the scaled down energies will scale up in the computers to reveal what might have happened during the BB.



So the LHC was not specifically designed to look for the Higgs Boson, but it was designed to simulate the BB energies...at which time the boson might become observable with all that energy available.

Answer 3

In the 70s, GW&S developed their theory of electroweak unification. They posited that the electromagnetic interaction and the weak interaction were the same thing, but that the symmetry between them was broken by another field--the Higgs field. They predicted the heavy weak vector bosons (W and Z's) that were ultimately found. The last piece of their theory that has yet to be found is the Higgs boson--the quantum of the Higgs field.



The Higgs particle must be quite massive for us not to have seen it yet. But there are limits to how large the mass can be, so the LHC will find it, if it exists.



One other possibility is that the Higgs field couples to the fermion fields--the quarks and the leptons. This could explain why these particles have the masses they do. Or to be precise, it would replace a bunch of parameters of the standard model (the particles' masses) with others (the coupling constant between the Higgs and the particles).



wji--we'll see. If that's all it is, it will turn up at Fermilab if they get enough luminosity. And those cross sections would be a lot greater if it had less mass.

Answer 4

the Higgs is a catchphrase for a number of different mechanisms that attempt to understand something we do not yet understand



the electron weighs this, the proton weighs that, the lambda hyperon weighs something else. there are hundreds of particles, and over and over, we see that they each have a very specific mass in numerous independent experiments.



but *why* do these particles have the masses that they have?

what physics helps us understand why the electron weighs 0.511 MeV/c^2, and not some other value?



the Higgs mechanism is a possibile theoretical explanation for this.



one way to determine if this makes sense is to "see" the Higgs Boson. FNAL has been looking *hard* for this for years and it's one of the major goals of the LHC.



to get a very basic idea, take a look at this

http://www.pparc.ac.uk/ps/bbs/bbs_mass_hm.asp



this is the most common analogy. for more details see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism



FNAL has a shot to upstage the LHC, but they'll need to run flat out for at least a couple more years to get a discovery level signal (assuming the present constraints on the Higgs mass are correct). FNAL might not be funded for that - funding is a year-to-year thing.



go FNAL go!



cheers



edit: hey Ms. Bekki - the higgs mass is most likely not that large - it seems very likely at this point that it is less than the top (~175 GeV). i think the difficulty in isolating it has more to do w/ the cross-sections/branching fractions etc etc....



cheers

Answer 5

The Higgs Boson A.K.A god particle explains why things have mass. Unlike other particles the Higgs is only a theory. That is why the "collider device" (lhc) is going to try to find the Higgs. If the Higgs does not exist then are physics is wrong and needs to change.