Physicists at CERN – the European Organization for Nuclear Research – think that data from the as-yet-undiscovered Higgs particle could lead to understanding the origin and amount of dark matter. Although it emits no light, dark matter might account for the observed speed at which distant galaxies in our universe are seen to move.
Large Hadron Collider
Today, Celia Viermann,a student from Halberg Germany asks the scientists, “What exactly is the Higgs particle?”
EarthSky spoke to Dr. Leon Lederman, a Nobel laureate in physics. Dr. Lederman said the Higgs boson, as it’s called, is a hypothetical particle that physicists hope might one day help them explain the structure of the universe.
Leon Lederman: There may not be such a thing. But the speculation has a certain amount of scientific beauty, if you like, and interest.
If the Higgs particle does exist, Dr. Lederman said, it could contribute to scientific understanding of why all known particles – things like atoms – exist with a mass, as physical matter.
Leon Lederman: In other words, everything we want to understand about the world requires the model of the basic particles, and the laws of physics by which these particles carry out their task.
Scientists are searching for evidence of the Higgs’ existence with the help of extremely powerful particle accelerators.
Leon Lederman: Many things about the world we do know, and the Higgs would fit smoothly into that world. That’s why the probability is that the Higgs will be found. But it’s certainly not a certainty.
EarthSky asked Dr. Lederman why it’s so important to find the Higgs particle.
Leon Lederman: Our job is to understand how the world works in its most primitive fashion. When we have a hypothesis that everything is made of atoms, and atoms are made of quarks and leptons, that’s the basic structure from which we will obtain our knowledge of the universe: Its origins, how it evolved, and particularly how it will age. A good theory of the universe will predict how the universe will evolve. It was the evolution of the universe that called into question our picture of gravity. There’s something called the theory of relativity, which is an accounting for how gravity tugs on different parts of the universe and gives rise to, for example, our solar system. In other words, everything we want to understand about the world has to do with a model of the basic particles and the laws of physics by which these particles carry out their tasks. The Higgs idea, if it were proven correct by experiment, would simplify our picture of how the world works. That’s our job, to make a picture of the universe that is so simple, that it could be inscribed on t-shirt of average size.
Dr. Lederman described the current picture of particle physics.
Leon Lederman: We know that all of matter – everything we have around us, chairs, trees, skies, moon, planets – all of this matter everywhere is embedded in an assumed field. Let’s call it the Higgs field. In the presence of that field, the matter we talked about can always be broken into molecules are made of atoms. The atoms are made of nuclei and surrounded by electrons in orbital fields, which create the atom. We can say deeper in the nucleus, we have explored its structure, and its structure is made of things called quarks. This whole picture we have is very complicated. When we try to draw a plan of how the world is composed and we start from the bottom up, we start by listing 6 different kinds of quarks. There are another set sort of particle called leptons. We’re getting the idea that everything in the world is made up of these fundamental particles.
Dr. Lederman said the presence of the Higgs field helps these particles fit together like pieces of a puzzle, and explains why they have split apart, with different masses.
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