'God Particle': Six big consequences of
the Higgs boson discovery
'God Particle':
Physicists announced Thursday that they have confirmed the existence of the
so-called God Particle – a term disliked by physicists and theologians alike.
Here are six of the biggest consequences of this discovery.
Physicists announced
today (March 14) that a particle discovered at the world's largest atom smasher
last year is a Higgs boson, a
long-sought particle thought to explain how other particles get their mass.
Discovered at the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC), where protons zip at
near light-speed around a 17-mile-long (27 kilometers) underground ring beneath Switzerlandand France, the Higgs boson particle is the last
undiscovered piece of the puzzle predicted by the Standard Model, the reigning theory of particle physics.
Confirming a Higgs
boson, physicists say, will have wide-reaching implications. Here are six of
the biggest consequences:
The Higgs boson has
long been thought the key to resolving the mystery of the origin of mass.
The Higgs boson is
associated with a field, called the Higgs field, theorized to pervade the
universe. As other particles travel though this field, they acquire mass much
as swimmers moving through a pool get wet, the thinking goes.
"The Higgs
mechanism is the thing that allows us to understand how the particles acquire
mass," said Joao Guimaraes da Costa, a physicist at Harvard Universitywho is the Standard Model Convener at the
LHC's ATLAS experiment, last year when the discovery was announced. "If there was no such mechanism, then
everything would be massless."
Confirming the
particle is a Higgs would also confirm that the Higgs mechanism for particles
to acquire mass is correct. "This discovery bears on the knowledge of how
mass comes about at the quantum level, and is the reason we built the LHC. It
is an unparalleled achievement," Caltechprofessor
of physics Maria Spiropulu, co-leader of the CMS experiment, said in a
statement last year. [Gallery: Search for the Higgs Boson]
And, it may offer
clues to the next mystery down the line, which is why individual particles have
the masses that they do.
"That could be part of a much larger theory," said Harvard University particle physicist Lisa Randall. "Knowing what the Higgs boson is, is
the first step of knowing a little more about what that theory could be. It's
connected."
The Standard Model is the reigning theory of particle physics that describes
the universe's very small constituents. Every particle predicted by the
Standard Model has been discovered — except one: the Higgs boson.
"It's the missing
piece in the Standard Model," Jonas Strandberg, a researcher at CERN
working on the ATLAS experiment, said last year of the particle announcement.
"So it would definitely be a confirmation that the theories we have now
are right."
So far, the Higgs
boson seems to match up with predictions made by the Standard Model. Even so,
the Standard Model itself isn't thought to be complete. It doesn't encompass
gravity, for example, and leaves out the dark matter thought to make up 98
percent of all matter in the universe. [6 Weird Facts About Gravity]
"Clear evidence
that the new particle is the Standard Model Higgs boson still would not
complete our understanding of the universe," Patty McBride, head of the
CMS Center at Fermilab,
said today (March 14) in a statement. "We still wouldn't understand why
gravity is so weak and we would have the mysteries of dark matter to confront.
But it is satisfying to come a step closer to validating a 48-year-old
theory."
The confirmation of
the Higgs also helps to explain how two of the fundamental forces of the
universe — the electromagnetic force that governs interactions between charged
particles, and the weak force that's responsible for radioactive decay — can be
unified. [9 Unsolved Physics Mysteries]
Every force in nature
is associated with a particle. The particle tied to
electromagnetism is the photon, a tiny, massless particle. The weak force is
associated with particles called the W and Z bosons, which are very massive.
The Higgs mechanism is
thought to be responsible for this.
"If you introduce
the Higgs field, the W and Z bosons mix with the field, and through this mixing
they acquire mass," Strandberg said. "This explains why the W and Z
bosons have mass, and also unifies the electromagnetic and weak forces into the
electroweak force."
Though other evidence
has helped buffer the union of these two forces, the Higgs discovery may seal
the deal.
The theory supersymmetry is
also affected by the Higgs discovery. This idea posits that every known
particle has a
"superpartner" particle with slightly different characteristics.
Supersymmetry is
attractive because it could help unify some of the other forces of nature, and
even offers a candidate for the particle that makes up dark matter. So far, though, scientists have found
indications of only a Standard Model Higgs boson, without any strong hints of
supersymmetric particles.
According to The Holy Quran
When the sun is wrapped up [in darkness] Surah
at Takwir
A verse in the Qur'an that says what means,
*{And of everything We have created pairs, that you may remember
(the Grace of Allah).}* (Adh-Dhariyat 51:49)
This Qur'anic verse outlines
the fact that all creatures, whether living beings or solid matter, are created
in pairs. This means that this phenomenon does not only apply to animals and
plants. Also, the verse does not refer exclusively to pairs of sexes or to
sexual reproduction alone; rather, it is much more general. It refers to
everything that was created.
Amazingly, the outstanding
truth and generality of this and similar verses came to be gradually realized,
and more so recently, during 14 centuries since the Quran was first revealed in
a primitive world. It is now even suggested that celestial bodies dispersed in
the infinite cosmos have their invisible counterpart termed "Black
Holes." These Black Holes are thought to be the negative form of matter in
universe.
The newly announced
finding offers major validation for the LHC and for the scientists who've
worked on the search for many years.
"This discovery
bears on the knowledge of how mass comes about at the quantum level, and is the
reason we built the LHC. It is an unparalleled achievement," Spiropulu
said in a statement last year. "More than a generation of scientists has
been waiting for this very moment and particle physicists, engineers, and
technicians in universities and laboratories around the globe have been working
for many decades to arrive at this crucial fork. This is the pivotal moment for
us to pause and reflect on the gravity of the discovery, as well as a moment of
tremendous intensity to continue the data collection and analyses."
The discovery of the
Higgs also has major implications for scientist Peter Higgs and his colleagues who first proposed the
Higgs mechanism in 1964. The finding also shines a symbolic light on the
boson's namesake, the late Indian physicist and mathematician Satyendranath
Bose, who along with Albert Einstein, helped to define bosons. A class of elementary particles, bosons (which include gluons and gravitons) mediate
interactions between fermions (including quarks, electrons and neutrinos), the
other group of fundamental building blocks of the universe.
6. Is the universe doomed?
The Higgs boson
discovery opens the door to new calculations that weren't previously possible,
scientists say, including one that suggests the universe is in for a cataclysm billions of years from now.
The mass of the Higgs
boson is a critical part of a calculation that portends the future of space and time. At around 126 times the mass of the proton, the Higgs is just
about what would be needed to create a fundamentally unstable universe that
would lead to a cataclysm billions of years from now.
According to The Holy
Quran
Al-Infitar
(THE CLEAVING, BURSTING APART)
|
1.
|
When the Sky is cleft asunder;
|
|
|
When the Stars are scattered;
|
Doom and gloom
It seems to be a perfect storm
to spell a dismal end to our universe in many billions of years. But don't
worry too much.
"Other things, like the
sun turning into a red giant, will happen before this happens,"
According to The Holy
Quran
فَإِذَا انشَقَّتِ
السَّمَاءُ فَكَانَتْ وَرْدَةً كَالدِّهَانِ
|
Suran Ar Rahman
|
55-37
|
And when the heaven splitteth asunder and becometh rosy like red
hide
|
"It may be the universe we live in is
inherently unstable, and at some point billions of years from now it's all
going to get wiped out," added Lykken, a collaborator on the CMS experiment.
