Last December, the Nobel prize in physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs for the prediction of the Higgs boson. We are cheering on this big physics event by introducing our next funflector® from the Particle Zoo: The very happy Higgs Boson!
The existence of the Higgs field was predicted 50 years ago to provide an explanation for the origins of mass. It was hypothesized to fill space and interact with the most basic particles in a way that gives them mass when otherwise they would have none.
An invisible field that fills all of space might seem odd, but right now there is an invisible gravitational field keeping you from floating away. There is also an invisible electromagnetic field that keeps you from simply passing straight through the floor. Find a way to put some extra energy into a field and you can “shake loose” particles. We do that all the time with electromagnetic fields, for example in a light bulb. We call he result light and the particles that emerge are photons, bearers of light.
After years of trying, an international team of physicists managed to show that the Higgs field exists. Instead of turning on a light bulb and observing the light, they smashed protons together in the LHC at CERN and “shook loose” some of those long-sought Higgs particles, which were recorded by huge particle detectors to, after quite some work, be observed on computer screens.
We know of no better way to visualize the Higgs field than this beautiful animation by Nigel Holmes:
Congratulations to François Englert and Peter Higgs and to all our friends and former colleagues, who tirelessly have kept building and tweaking the LHC and the Atlas and CMS detectors, long after our careers headed elsewhere!
Dan & Elisabeth