A missed discovery would have seen the collapse of an otherwise extremely successful theory. The discovery of the Higgs particle confirmed the Standard Model up to the energies currently probed (billions of times the mass of a proton). Without it, particles like the electron would be massless, atoms could not form, and our world would certainly look much different. The Higgs particle is a manifestation of such an energy field. “Larger masses correspond to stronger interactions with the Higgs field. “According to the Standard Model of particle physics, elementary particles acquire their mass via the interaction with an energy field, the Higgs field, that pervades the universe. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (850) 644-9282 has been a convener of the CERN Large Hadron Collider Higgs Working Group since 2010 and serves on its Theory Advisory Committee. Laura Reina, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Physics Reina was recently featured in Science News, and she is available to speak to media organizations about the discovery of the particle, what it means for our understanding of physics and where research is headed. Its discovery filled in a missing keystone of the Standard Model and opened new directions for investigating fundamental physics questions.įlorida State University physics Professor Laura Reina is a member of the CERN Large Hadron Collider Higgs Working Group. The particle was the last element of the theory of particle physics known as the Standard Model to still be missing experimental evidence. (Courtesy of CERN)Ī decade ago, physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced a newly discovered subatomic particle: the Higgs boson. Scientists used this particle accelerator to discover the Higgs boson. ![]() The latest LHC results, made public in December 2011, indicate that the Higgs particle, if it exists, must have a mass between 115-130 GeV/c^2.The Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Physicists requested a second extension to see if their observation might blossom into a discovery, but the machine was dismantled to make way for a higher-energy Higgs hunter, the LHC. During the machine's stay of execution, even more candidate Higgs events appeared. Excited scientists convinced CERN management to keep LEP running for six weeks beyond the original shut-down date to see if the observation would grow more convincing with additional data. The LEP experiments began to find signs of something that looked rather like the Higgs particle with a mass around 115 GeV/c^2, about the mass of an iodine atom. In 2000, CERN's flagship accelerator, the Large Electron Positron Collider, was scheduled to close after 11 years of successful operation when something curious happened. Scientists may have first glimpsed the Higgs boson more than a decade ago. However, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would attract a lot of attention: Party workers would clump around her, slowing her down, giving her metaphorical "mass." Creative types have since swapped the characters in the metaphor for Albert Einstein mobbed by fellow scientists or pop stars swarmed by paparazzi.ĩ. An anonymous person could move through the crowd unhindered. Miller compared the Higgs field to a crowd of political party workers spread evenly through a room. Waldegrave handed out champagne to the winners, who included physicist David Miller of University College London. ![]() Scientists had such difficulty explaining the Higgs field to the British government that in 1993, UK Science Minister William Waldegrave challenged them to send him their best one-page descriptions. The more a particle interacts with the Higgs field, the more mass it will have. The science minister for the United Kingdom once held a national competition to find the best Higgs explanation.Īccording to the Higgs model, elementary particles gain mass by interacting with an invisible, omnipresent field.
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