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jaybus
Moving to the very large, gravity should be slowing the expansion of the ...
ButtahNBred
Thanks for the video! I never really understood what the higgs was until now. I ...
What the heck is a Higgs Boson?
Sylvie Barak
7/6/2012 5:31 PM EDT
It’s not every day theoretical physics becomes a news sensation.
Indeed, it’s downright odd to hear “The God Particle” being discussed by people in supermarket queues, or exchanging pleasantries on the treadmill at the gym.
“Nice day, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and how about those guys at CERN discovering Higgs Boson? Amazing!”
Everyone, it seems, has become a bit of a particle physicist overnight. Or have they?
“What exactly is Higgs Bottom?” my younger sister asked me yesterday, causing me first to laugh and then to think. I mean, yes, what exactly is it? Because as geeky as I may be, I still had a tough time explaining it to her without furtively pulling up Wikipedia on my phone and hoping she wouldn’t notice.
The first thing that’s striking about Higgs Boson is that we’ve been looking for it for a rather long time. 48 years in fact. So it’s an elusive little sucker.
Another cool fact for nerds is that it’s also linked to a kind of force field (the Higgs field) and is thought to explain how matter actually attains its mass.
Because, you see, most mass in the universe (about 96 percent of it) is actually made up of sinister sounding “dark matter” while only four percent of the universe has mass we can actually explain. “Dark matter,” “Dark energy”, it all sounds more Harry Potter than Higgs Boson.
But for the wizards at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, finding evidence of Higgs Boson is almost the equivalent of winning the 10 million dollar jackpot at a casino – almost impossible, and leaving you with the sense that things may not be all they initially seem.
And then of course there’s the way in which we’ve forced Higgs Boson out of hiding, using the incredibly awesome sounding Large Hadron Collider, equal parts cool and terrifying because it may or may not end up ripping open a black hole in the fabric of our existence, though my physicist friends assure me this is “quite unlikely.” Then again, so was the possibility of finding Higgs Boson.
Two separate groups of physicists are said to have found evidence of the elusive particle with less than a one in 3.5 million chance they got it wrong and were actually seeing something else. Now, I may not be much of a gambler, but I like those odds.
That aside, though, and we still don’t REALLY know what it is, do we?
Except that I’ve discovered this really cute video, with fantastic animation, which helps me to at least scratch the surface of understanding. You’ll like it, take a look:
Next: Know your particles
Indeed, it’s downright odd to hear “The God Particle” being discussed by people in supermarket queues, or exchanging pleasantries on the treadmill at the gym.
“Nice day, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and how about those guys at CERN discovering Higgs Boson? Amazing!”
Everyone, it seems, has become a bit of a particle physicist overnight. Or have they?
“What exactly is Higgs Bottom?” my younger sister asked me yesterday, causing me first to laugh and then to think. I mean, yes, what exactly is it? Because as geeky as I may be, I still had a tough time explaining it to her without furtively pulling up Wikipedia on my phone and hoping she wouldn’t notice.
The first thing that’s striking about Higgs Boson is that we’ve been looking for it for a rather long time. 48 years in fact. So it’s an elusive little sucker.
Another cool fact for nerds is that it’s also linked to a kind of force field (the Higgs field) and is thought to explain how matter actually attains its mass.
Because, you see, most mass in the universe (about 96 percent of it) is actually made up of sinister sounding “dark matter” while only four percent of the universe has mass we can actually explain. “Dark matter,” “Dark energy”, it all sounds more Harry Potter than Higgs Boson.
But for the wizards at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, finding evidence of Higgs Boson is almost the equivalent of winning the 10 million dollar jackpot at a casino – almost impossible, and leaving you with the sense that things may not be all they initially seem.
And then of course there’s the way in which we’ve forced Higgs Boson out of hiding, using the incredibly awesome sounding Large Hadron Collider, equal parts cool and terrifying because it may or may not end up ripping open a black hole in the fabric of our existence, though my physicist friends assure me this is “quite unlikely.” Then again, so was the possibility of finding Higgs Boson.
Two separate groups of physicists are said to have found evidence of the elusive particle with less than a one in 3.5 million chance they got it wrong and were actually seeing something else. Now, I may not be much of a gambler, but I like those odds.
That aside, though, and we still don’t REALLY know what it is, do we?
Except that I’ve discovered this really cute video, with fantastic animation, which helps me to at least scratch the surface of understanding. You’ll like it, take a look:
The Higgs Boson Explained from PHD Comics on Vimeo.
Continue reading on the next page....
Next: Know your particles
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GoStripes
7/6/2012 6:12 PM EDT
video too long.
Can the Higgs make me happy? Does it mean we can travel faster than light?
Should be easy enough to say yes or no.
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SylvieBarak
7/6/2012 6:39 PM EDT
no ;)
Sorry I couldn't make your Friday happier... I will work on something more entertaining with a shorter video for next week, cool?
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StvNordquist
7/8/2012 11:56 PM EDT
Neat, thanks (for each page, at that); next fundamental waveform I hope for a sort of vertical-farm/larder/kitchen layout chart with Maxwell's Equations in a rhombus and some choice arrows or bluelining. You can go all Higgs Starbuck again.
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Thomas "Rick" Tewell
7/6/2012 6:51 PM EDT
GoStrpes...absolute BS. The video is freakin' brilliant. The creativity is unlike anything else I have seen here. Are you kidding me with that negative crap?
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ReneCardenas
7/9/2012 1:23 PM EDT
GoStripes, BTW sorry to break the news this way, but u asked for it, for the simple answers that you seek: There is no Santa, nor Tooth fairy and neither gold awaits for you at end of rainbows.
FYI, the electron's presence and its benefits
were discovered some years back. And modern life is happier because of that.
Sylvie,
Good video, science will never appeal to some people unless they see an immediate personal reward. So I wouldn't bother with a shorter version. ;-) IMHO
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SumeetKumar
7/6/2012 7:11 PM EDT
Great video. My "Grand Ma" will learn a thing or two about Higgs Boson after watching this video :).
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unknown multiplier
7/6/2012 10:33 PM EDT
Your connection with dark matter is brilliant. Does/should the Higgs give dark matter mass?
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seaEE
7/7/2012 2:38 AM EDT
I liked the video. I would be interested in seeing a more in-depth detailed video. Why does the Higgs-Boson bump show up in the middle of the y-axis of the graph? And what does "Boson" mean? And what is the relationship between the Higgs-Boson particle and the Higgs field? And finally, is negative mass a proven impossibility? If I could eat a burger that had negative mass, would I lose weight? Perhaps I should look at the wikipedia as well.
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Bert22306
7/7/2012 4:53 AM EDT
I think the bump is not necessarily in the middle of the curve. I think all he's saying is, just like the other particles are produced with just so much energy, so would the Higgs boson. Less energy or more energy in the collision, and you get other particles than this Higgs. So you need lots and lots of trials to get JUST the right amount of energy to create this new particle, in a way that's detectable (statistically significant).
Higgs field is to Higgs boson as EM field is to photon, looks like to me. One is the field theory, the other the particle theory.
I also kept getting stuck on this dismissal of negative mass. Watch for the emergence of a twin to the Higgs boson, like with negative spin, that gives matter a negative mass. Intriguing to think of parallel universes, e.g. where mass is imaginary of negative? (Imaginary mass must only travel at speeds greater than c? Negative mass absorbs energy?)
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jaybus
7/14/2012 7:26 AM EDT
Moving to the very large, gravity should be slowing the expansion of the universe, yet we observe that it is not. Something is pushing the galaxies apart. Dark energy is the term originally given to whatever force that is. One possibility is that where ordinary matter attracts other ordinary matter (gravity), ordinary matter repels dark matter (antigravity). Or perhaps the dark matter increases the mass of the universe, and so the total energy of the big bang, to the point where it simply hasn't had time to stop expanding yet. Who knows?
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KB3001
7/7/2012 4:33 AM EDT
These theoretical physicists are really funny. Everytime they measure something their equations cannot explain, they add something to their equations to cover it. They call that thing a funny name and give it a weird explanation that nobody can understand, not even them really!
There is nothing fundamentally new theory-wise since the days of Einstein, Max Planck and the likes.... lazy science if you ask me :-)
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FISH123
7/11/2012 1:18 PM EDT
Einstein did exactly that on his Equation of the Universe from his general relativity theory:
1. The solution from original equation shows the universe was expanding--against earlier 20s century view. He added a universe constant to balance the expansion.
2. When Hubble in the 1930s observed the universe was indeed expanding. Einstein called his addition of the equation was his "biggest blunder".
3. But nowdays since the dark matter/dark energy, the physics community was right with the addition: if he moved the term to the other side of the equation, it will naturally explain the dark energy!
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aarunaku
7/7/2012 10:30 AM EDT
I had been searching for a good explanation over the web on the Higgs particle. This is so far the best one. Thanks for posting this.
It depends how people perceive the importance of Higgs particle discovery, hence some likes it while it may not mean much more than just a video.
If one looks back in time where only 90plus elements were discovered, every new discovery got harder and harder after that, it is sort of the same plight here, but orders of magnitude harder because everything goes up, energy, $, techniques, skill etc..and the time scale of these interaction gets smaller and smaller. For engineers, think about doing something like TeraTeraflops in fractions of a second with high accuracy..how does the design rule, device mechanism and heating mechanism be controlled,what is the chemistry? How to analyze this data?
It deserves all the worth of it to understand the gene of all things.
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Wnderer
7/7/2012 5:40 PM EDT
What determines a particle's mass?
Answer: The number Higgs Bosons produced when it accelerated in a Higgs Field.
What determines the number of Higgs Bosons a particle produces when accelerated in a Higgs Field?
Answer: A property called masss.
What determines a particle's masss?
Answer: The number Higggs Bosons produced when it accelerated in a Higggs Field.
What determines the number of Higggs Bosons a particle produces when accelerated in a Higggs Field?
Answer: A property called massss.
What determines a particle's massss?
Answer: The number Higgggs Bosons produced when it accelerated in a Higgggs Field.
What determines the number of Higgggs Bosons a particle produces when accelerated in a Higgggs Field?
Answer: A property called masssss.
What determines a particle's masssss?
Answer: The number Higggggs Bosons produced when it accelerated in a Higggggs Field.
Okay I see the trend but what determines the number of Higg + (infinite g's) Bosons a particle produces when accelerated in a Higg + (infinite g's) Field?
Answer: It's turtles all the way down.
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EREBUS
7/8/2012 4:30 PM EDT
There is a big difference between claiming that you "Think" you have found a Higgs Boson and actually proving that you found one.
I think you can go back to Einsteins equations and his statement that "God does not throw dice", to conclude that there are simpler explanations for the universe than the need for this particle. Please remember, Quantum Mechanics is still just a theory.
Just my opinion,
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Jeff.Mercure
7/12/2012 7:25 AM EDT
I am always shocked when I hear the word "just" lumped with "theory". And on a technical website yet! A theory in the science and technical world is a set of well tested, and widely accepted explanations for known facts.
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KB3001
7/12/2012 8:52 AM EDT
Correct, although how well supported and how widely supported differ from one theory to another. I would also add that any scientific theory must be falsifiable. Until someone can prove it is false, a scientific theory remains valid (as it is supported by observation and experiment)
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StvNordquist
7/8/2012 10:46 PM EDT
Farming and deep-well petroleum exploration are theories, too; nobody books rain ahead, goes 7 miles down with a headlamp, or makes up the difference by accelerating in a faith field. And no, nobody actually works in math, fine art, particle physics or governance making Fractional Hall Positron Matter; it is tortoises, Alain Greienspan, vim, tcsh, and a big bag of azure kush all through.
Yes we still have a long way to go, before we can grant 2-year certificates in Quantum Mechanics instead of Java; but as we get close, it will become possible to make an arbitrary mass of chocolate and hard cheese out of 1kg of chocolate and hard cheese (and take them 7km down a bore with a touchstone.) Or, book the foundations for cosmic safety and commerce if anyone gets out the vote for that sort of garbage.
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seaEE
7/9/2012 12:11 AM EDT
So what is next on the horizon for physics? Have there been any tests yet that point towards string theory has a viable model?
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francescosancetta
7/11/2012 3:03 AM EDT
what about the creation of a field opposite to the Higgs field to make the mass to be energy without any radiation problem?
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FISH123
7/11/2012 12:58 PM EDT
Everything the physists do is trying to answer follwoing questions: Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we from? It is WWW.
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Rchandta1
7/10/2012 1:42 AM EDT
Very interesting video. Kind of Higgs-for-dummy. I am curious how many particle physicists are out there. Given the size of the community there is lot of money and visibility. Hope it is real. Not like Y2K by the turn of last century when billions were poured to solve imaginary problem.
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Robert.Buck_#2
7/10/2012 9:49 AM EDT
Y2K was a real problem but by working on the solution before it occured it became a non-problem. Just like a house not burning down because you replaced a faulty device in the house HVAC.
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Bert22306
7/10/2012 6:27 PM EDT
Nah, I have my doubts. Some countries, e.g. Italy, did virtually nothing about Y2K, and they didn't have any problems either.
Perhaps a more likely problem will be when the NTP time stamp turns over. Which will occur 7 Feb 2036 at 06:28:16 GMT, when we transition to Epoch 1.
Off topic, though. Soeaking of which, Gordon's post below was quite hilarious.
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MarvA
7/11/2012 3:05 PM EDT
Not totally imaginary. I used Quicken 99 at home. It let me enter year 2000, no problem. I then did the "real" Y2K test by advancing the computer date to 2000 and entered some transactions OK. I was smug, but deceived with over-confidence.
When the real 2000 rolled around I soon discovered that my Quicken 99 wouldn't enter any 00 dates automatically (if I remember correctly). I had to go out and buy Quicken 2001 to get it to work correctly.
Moral to the story? My simple test wasn't thourogh enough. You gotta be really careful before making serious proclamations.
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GordonScott
7/10/2012 4:09 AM EDT
Off-topic really but I loved this...
The Higgs Boson is called "The God Particle" and it's purpose seems to be to give Mass to all the other particles.
Proof at last that God is a Catholic.
(disclaimer: actually I'm a Sceptic & a Humanist; but I liked the story).
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FISH123
7/11/2012 12:37 PM EDT
Guys, according the Standard Model (SM), you own everything to this "Higgs Boson": it generates mass(yeh, say you weigh 212 pounds!).
W/O Higgs boson,no mass, no pretons, no electrons, no elements, no stars, NO sun, no earth, no human, no ICs!
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FISH123
7/11/2012 12:56 PM EDT
If anybody thinks $20B is too much, well think again, it was one physist at the same place--CERN created the world wide web or www as now everybody knows it!
This WWW generates trillions$$$ revenue every year includes www.google.com, www.EETIMES.com....
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tb1
7/11/2012 3:41 PM EDT
"Perhaps a more likely problem will be when the NTP time stamp turns over. Which will occur 7 Feb 2036 at 06:28:16 GMT, when we transition to Epoch 1."
I think a bigger problem will occur on Jan 18, 2038. That's when most PC's time counters roll over (unless they switch to a 64 bit timer).
Here's a simple Perl program to test it out:
print ":",scalar localtime(2147483645),"\n";
print ":",scalar localtime(2147483646),"\n";
print ":",scalar localtime(2147483647),"\n";
print ":",scalar localtime(2147483648),"\n";
print ":",scalar localtime(2147483649),"\n";
On my PC and Perl software, it prints the date only for the first three times.
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kallsop
7/11/2012 4:08 PM EDT
$20B is but 2 days increase in the US federal debt, and a very small fraction of our bailout money gifted to incompetent/crooked bankers. Perspective.
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KB3001
7/11/2012 5:57 PM EDT
Sure, but if you have many requests of such size, it soon adds up to a huge sum ;-)
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Bert22306
7/11/2012 6:02 PM EDT
Perhaps too, I don't think there is much that is more important to the human race than discovery. It is "eating the apple" that makes us unique, after all. As far as I'm concerned, there are not many more worthy causes to sink some money into.
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WireMan
7/13/2012 4:19 PM EDT
The Higgs boson represents the culmination of the physicists' biggest welfare project to date. It keeps them employed and they can but billions of dollars worth of equipment and instruments, which makes the suppliers happy. As far as I can tell, neither the Higgs boson nor knowledge about how the universe started with the Big Bang have any importance to daily life. So it's discovery is a non event with no significance except to the Nobel Prize committee; and what do they know? Years ago the Nobel prize in medicine went to the doctor who devised the frontal lobotomy. And more recently the Nobel Peace prize went to Yasser Arafat. Take it from a scientist, the Higgs boson means nothing.
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Michael.Wilson.Argent
7/13/2012 5:40 PM EDT
This is one of the most short-sighted comments I've ever seen - and they abound on the internet. Your statements belie you assertion that you are a scientist. The computer and network that allowed you to post your comments were made possible by the work of physicists whose work was purely theoretical when it was new; but it was elaborated on and tinkered with and then applied by engineers to make the electronic world we live in.
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Tiger Joe
7/13/2012 4:37 PM EDT
You know I thought the neutron was simply a proton and electron fused together. From a mass and charge point of view that is true.
Yet the video didn't draw the neutron that way, instead using a combination of those u and d things.
The problem with this video is that it doesn't really tell me what the Higgs boson is. If it is a particle that gives other particles mass, that means every particle that has mass must be made up of Higgs bosons. But how?
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ButtahNBred
7/13/2012 8:06 PM EDT
Thanks for the video! I never really understood what the higgs was until now. I even learned a bit about quarks and leptons.
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