![]() ![]() They suggested that all particles had no mass just after the Big Bang. Physicists including Peter Higgs, Robert Brout and François Englert came up with a solution to solve this conundrum. We know from experiments that this is not true. However, in order for this unification to work mathematically, it requires that force-carrying particles have no mass. This unification implies that electricity, magnetism, light and some types of radioactivity are all manifestations of a single underlying force called the electroweak force. The two forces could be described within a unified theory, which forms the basis of the Standard Model. In the 1960s physicists began to realize that there are very close ties between two of the four fundamental forces between elements: the weak force and the electromagnetic force. Over time and through many experiments by many physicists, the Standard Model has become established as a well-tested physics theory. Developed in the 1960s and 70s, it has successfully explained a host of experimental results and precisely predicted a wide variety of phenomena. Our best understanding of how these twelve particles and three of the forces are related to each other is encapsulated in the Standard Model of particles and forces. The theories and discoveries of thousands of physicists over the past century have resulted in a remarkable insight into the fundamental structure of matter: everything in the Universe is found to be made from twelve basic building blocks called fundamental particles, governed by four fundamental forces. First hypothesised in 1964, the Higgs boson, if discovered, would be a vital missing piece of the model that physicists use to describe elementary particles and their interactions: the Standard Model. The particle we now call the Higgs boson has never been observed. ![]() This could happen at any time and we wouldn't see it coming.The term 'The God particle' was coined by the physicist Leon Lederman in his 1993 popular science book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? The particle that the book title refers to is the 'Higgs boson'. … This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. Here's how Hawking describes this Higgs doomsday scenario in the new book: "The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). This quantum fluctuation could happen somewhere out in the empty vacuum of space between galaxies and create an expanding "bubble," Lykken said. If the Higgs field makes it over that energy hill, some physicists think the destruction of the universe is waiting on the other side.īut an unlucky quantum fluctuation, or a change in energy, could trigger a process called " quantum tunneling." Instead of having to climb the energy hill, quantum tunneling would make it possible for the Higgs field to "tunnel" through the hill into the next, even lower-energy valley. The huge amount of energy required to change into another state is like chugging up a hill. Right now the Higgs field is in a minimum potential energy state - like a valley in a field of hills and valleys. "Just like matter can exist as liquid or solid, so the Higgs field, the substance that fills all space-time, could exist in two states," Gian Giudice, a theoretical physicist at the CERN particle physics center where the Higgs boson was discovered, explained during a TED talk in October 2013. Physicists believe the Higgs field may be slowly changing as it tries to find an optimal balance of field strength and the energy required to maintain that strength. The Higgs field emerged at the birth of the universe and has acted as its own source of energy since then, Lykken said. That conclusion involves the Higgs field. This turns out to be the precise mass needed to keep the universe on the brink of instability, but physicists say the delicate state will eventually collapse and the universe will become unstable. The Higgs boson is about 126 billion electron volts, or about the 126 times the mass of a proton. Now that scientists have measured the particle's mass, they can make many other calculations, including one that seems to point to the end of the universe. Since its discovery two years ago, the particle has been making waves in the physics community. The Higgs boson particle is important to the Standard Model because it signals the existence of the Higgs field, an invisible energy field present throughout the universe that imbues other particles with mass. Its discovery lends strong support to the Standard Model of particle physics, which is thought to govern the basic building blocks of matter. The Higgs boson is sometimes referred to as the "God Particle," much to the chagrin of scientists who prefer the official name. ![]()
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