The particle physicists have constructed a standard model of particle physics in the last century (I literally mean a hundred years!). This contains all fundamental known parts of matter:
E.g. the electron, proton and neutron. Those nice little guys you know out of chemistry classes in school.
Now protons and neutrons actually consist of three valence quarks each, bound together by the strong force, one of the four fundamental known forces in the world. These forces are transmitted by gauge bosons and I'll try to list them:
Electromagnetic, transmitted by photons, known as light. Governs chemistry and visual range physics as well as x-rays.
Weak force, transmitted by Z[SUP]0[/SUP] and W[SUP]+/-[/SUP] bosons, which have mass. Responsible for radioactive decay.
Strong force, transmitted by eight gluons, massless, holding together nuclei, protons and neutrons.
Gravity, which is so weak that we cannot measure it in particle physics (yet), so not included.
The point is, all those force carriers are massless, but the Z and the Ws. So we needed a mechanism that generated their mass. That mechanism is the Higgs mechanism and it is mediated by the Higgs boson.
For which we search for 28 years and now have found it, probably.
so all 4 force's are massless , except for "weak force". In order to have mass there needs to be an origin of that mass, and that is the Higgs, correct?
adder wrote: so all 4 force's are massless , except for "weak force". In order to have mass there needs to be an origin of that mass, and that is the Higgs, correct?
We don't know about gravity, but we know about strong and electromagnetic force.
Actually we already invented a unification of electromagnetic and weak force, generating the so called electroweak force and yeah, for the electroweak force the Higgs boson is one possible solution that can generate the mass of the weak force bosons.
If it's the Higgs, the next question is: Is it only one Higgs? If it's not, we got a good chance for finding supersymmetry and that would give us candidates for dark matter.
Is it really a Higgs or some other mechanism? E.g. there's an alternative that states that every particle we now deem elemental is in reality composite, again. We could use that boson we found to exclude this theory or verify it.
For now, the door to exciting new physics is opened. And that aside we know nothing of dark energy. Finding anything new on this energy scale is really encouraging.
adder wrote: i tough that dark energy was an even bigger mystery then dark matter, so maybe this leads to nothing (that we can understand)
It is a bigger mystery and there's not one good theory about that, yet.
But who knows in which ways this new particle will surprise us.
If you had a look at Joe's show of the Higgs to tau tau-channel, you'll see that the SM Higgs is almost excluded in this channel. Unless we're doing something seriously wrong in that channel (and if ATLAS sees the same), we have a non-SM-Higgs boson on our hands at the end of the year, should this result persist. So all bets are off.
By the way, a really nice blog by nature which gives a short summary and some commentary introductions to particle physics concepts, made live from the auditory by a journalist. For all those impatient ones who don't want to watch the talks, I highly recommend this:
You heard him. He didn't sleep for days, til this very night.
Add to that the excitement of announcing a discovery of something real new to the whole world.
And then imagine you were an expert in, let's say, soccer. You know all the rules, all the tactics, all the players. Then you're put in front of a crowd that doesn't know the rules, isn't aware that tactics are involved and will not recognize a single player. Then you're Joe in front of that crowd, today.
(For everyone not involved in soccer, like myself, just replace "soccer" with something you feel you're an expert in.)
Higgs-like particle at 4.9 sigma, that's virtually discovered. Plus our cousins over at Teva reported a similar finding, albeit at a lower sigma level. This news is MASSIVE. Sorry, couldn't resist!
bwfcnut wrote: Higgs-like particle at 4.9 sigma, that's virtually discovered. Plus our cousins over at Teva reported a similar finding, albeit at a lower sigma level. This news is MASSIVE. Sorry, couldn't resist!
You don't have to be sorry.
*whisper*But those Tevatron guys annoy me, bringing out a paper with hints of a Higgs boson after restraining their fits (so that they disacknowledge a possible Higgs nonexistence). Actually the german press understood that the Tevatron would have made the discovery and only waited for the confirmation by LHC.*polite cough*
The media just don't tell people about reality.The Higgs' boson is a side effect of the really juicy thing;the Higgs field the field that gives stuff its mass.Media sadly cannot afford to tell people the truth.
Short version: Tomorrow at 9 o'clock CET in Geneva there will be a press conference by the spokespersons of CMS and ATLAS, the general purpose experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.
They will present the actual status of their Higgs search.
If the Higgs particle should be discovered, it is deemed to be the fundamental mass generating particle in the so called Standard Model of particle physics that held strong for the last ~50 years and would, by this discovery, again be validated.
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