Search for the Universe’s Missing Puzzle Piece finally over:
Why the Higgs boson is this decade’s most fundamental scientific discovery
It is a truth acknowledged, both in a Physics classroom and in the universe, that everything around us that occupies space and has mass is what we call matter, by definition. It follows then, that an object can only take up space if it has mass, and vice versa.
How does one object obtain the mass that it possesses, though?
In fact, let’s bring up the bigger question: how did all the matter that exists in the universe get mass in the first place? And, yes, we’re talking Big Bang era here. Surely, it must all come down to the structure of matter, like atoms and whatnot. Decades of mankind’s effort to comprehend the inner workings of our majestic universe have led to the development of the Standard Model, the framework that we currently have for our understanding of the fundamental particles, the basic building blocks of the universe, along with how they interact. Science, however, has its flaws and limitations, and the Standard Model was no exception. Although theorists believed they were making headway by incorporating three out of the four fundamental forces (the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, and not including the gravitational force) in their newly found model, they had a problem: their equations only worked if particles had no mass. Obviously, that was impossible in a universe loaded with matter, from the biggest stars to the tiniest organisms.
They had come all this way in their conquest for deeper understanding; they weren’t just about to give up now. Writing on two separate papers, particle physicists Peter Higgs and François Englert (both now Nobel Prize winners) came up with a possible solution by theorizing that the universe might be pervaded by an invisible and hypothetical field that essentially slowed particles down, imparting them with mass, and thereby allowing the world around us to exist. Eventually, this hypothetical quantum field came to be known as the famous Higgs field, which, if it existed, served as the major ingredient in the Standard Model for being responsible for giving particles their masses. In addition, all quantum fields have a fundamental particle associated with them, as a consequence of the wave-particle duality, and as for the theoretical Higgs field, the particle was the also theoretical Higgs boson. A boson is a force-carrier particle that controls the interaction of physical forces. Only by interacting with the Higgs field do these particles acquire mass and give rise to matter.
Alas, the puzzle had been solved! However, whether the mathematical calculations coincided with physical reality had still yet to be proven. It was only just a working theory, after all. Both Higgs and Englert knew that they wouldn’t get any recognition for their contributions until they had proven that the field exists; and there was only one way to do that: create — and detect — the quantum particle in the Higgs field, the Higgs boson itself.
Due to its constant non-zero value, the Higgs field cannot be switched on or off like the electromagnetic field, so calling it “challenging” would be a serious understatement. Not only did they require particle collisions at sufficiently high energies to create the particle, they also did not know what this energy range was.
After searching for signs of the Higgs boson in particle-collision debris at other colliders, they decided that only the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, had the capacity to explore the entire predicted energy range where the Higgs boson could appear, and its two particle detectors, ATLAS and CMS, were the devices that could confirm or deny its existence. Embarking on its high-energy journey on March 30, 2010, the LHC began its work. Its mechanism involved two protons colliding within the LHC at super-high speeds, allowing their quarks and gluons to interact with one another. These high-energy interactions can then produce a Higgs boson, which would immediately decay into lighter particles that ATLAS and CMS could detect.
In December 2011, early signs of the Higgs boson had been observed as both detectors had seen bumps in their data that were starting to look distinct from any statistical fluctuations or noise. After seven months of experimentation and data analysis, Joe Incandela of CMS and Fabiola Gianotti of ATLAS finally claimed the discovery of the Higgs boson on July 4, 2012. With just two years of data from the LHC, this discovery exceeded expectations as to how difficult and how long the detection would take.
About fifty years later since their proposal of the Higgs field theory, Peter Higgs wiped away tears of joy in CERN’s auditorium, and François Englert paid tribute to his late colleague and collaborator, Robert Brout, who did not live to see the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism proven. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman then coined the term “God Particle” for the Higgs boson, considering it took years and a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator to discover it.
“The fact that we found the Higgs boson doesn’t mean we’re done,” Cousins, a worker at CMS, said. As of now, CERN has found other purposes for the Higgs boson, such as using it to probe into dark matter and search for antimatter symmetry. Although it is an integral part of the standard model in particle physics, the Higgs boson discovery was merely just a small step towards unravelling the mysteries of the universe. Breakthroughs for us don’t mean it’s finished; it means we’re only just beginning.
When asking questions, you look for answers, even if it takes half a century’s worth of searching. And when you do find them, don’t stop there — it’s time to begin asking some more.
About the Author
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Shaina Delia Tomaneng is an incoming Grade 11 Student of PSHS-CRC. She writes for The Thirteenth Scholars.
She has participated various science competitions nationally and internationally and has been writing for the Science and Technology section of the publication, since its fourth volume.
