![]() ![]() And its huge mass - by subatomic standards - meant that it could be created only in super-high energy collisions. For one thing, the Higgs boson was expected to be highly unstable, disintegrating into other particles in a tiny fraction of a second, according to physicist Brian Greene (opens in new tab) writing for Smithsonian Magazine. Higgs' theory was an elegant explanation for the mass of elementary particles, but was it correct? The most obvious way to verify it was to observe a Higgs boson, but that was never going to be easy. The mechanism they proposed involves an invisible but all-pervading field, later dubbed the "Higgs field." It is through interactions with this field that elementary particles acquire their mass. In the 1960s, theoretical physicists, including Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, came up with a possible answer, according to CERN (opens in new tab), the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The question is: How do they get their mass? The remaining 1% of the mass, however, is intrinsic to those elementary particles. Some 99% of the mass of any real-world object, such as a human body, comes from the binding energy holding elementary particles together inside atoms. ![]() ![]() Since c is just a constant - the speed of light - then what that equation tells us is that, except for a change of measurement units, energy and mass are the same thing. It's the m in Einstein's famous equation E = mc^2, where E is energy. One of the main goals of future research will be to explore such properties with enough precision to unveil possible anomalies - signals of new physics beyond the Higgs particle itself - and to use them as guidance in answering those open big questions about our universe.One of the most basic properties of matter is "mass" - a quantity that determines how much resistance an object offers when a force is applied to it, according to the U.S. “ In the decade after the discovery, physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider have been able to measure the Higgs particle properties, including several of its couplings to other elementary particles. 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 Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. ![]()
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