Ten years ago, jubilant physicists working on the world's most powerful science experiment, the Large Hadron collide (LHC), announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle that scientists had been searching for since 1964.
Victoria Martin is a professor of particle physics at the University of Edinburgh.
When the Large Hadron collider came online in 2010, it was its top priority to find the particle that gives rise to the universe. Within two years of starting operations, the two main experiments detected the Higgs boson.
The Director-General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research said during a preview press conference that they were not expecting to see the particle so quickly. She said that it was the superior computing infrastructure applied to experiments that performed better than their design specifications that made the discovery possible.
Our original coverage of the Higgs discovery is included in this article.
The discovery of the Higgs boson opened doors that had been closed.
The head of the theoretical physics department at the European Organization for Nuclear Research said that particle physics has changed in the past 10 years.
The force of the energy field known as the Higgs field is similar to the force of a photon.
The field is more important than the particles. It was pervasive across space and time. The mass of certain particles is due to the interaction between them and the Higgs field.
"Particle physics has changed more in the past 10 years than in the previous 30 years."
— Gian Giudice
The analogy is to think of the field as a kind of treacle that slows down some particles. Less massive particles can fly off at the speed of light and have no mass at all. The particles that are the most massive are the ones that are slowed down by the treacle of the Higgs field.
Although they have yet to watch the process happen, scientists believe that the particle's mass comes from interacting with itself. 125 billion electronvolts is 125 times more massive than one of the positively charged protons at an atom's core. Particle physicists know that mass and energy are not the same and that they refer to mass in terms of their energy. One fundamental particle is larger than the rest.
The measurement of its mass was only the first step. The Standard Model tells us a lot about the way the Higgs boson should behave after 10 years of testing.
It could provide an insight into why our universe exists.
The only thing that has a quantum spin is the Higgs boson. The Standard Model of particle physics predicted this, so it isn't a surprise, but scientists including Martin have continued trying to measure the spin of the boson as a way to test the model. They haven't found any proof that it has a spin.
The nature of the Higgs field is the reason why the particle doesn't spin when other particles do. The Higgs field has no obvious source other than the mass of an object. There is a non-localized part of the universe. The field and thevacuum share the same fabric of space-time. There is no quantum spin in the vacuum.
The vacuum is not safe. The energy level of the vacuum is raised due to quantum fluctuations. When it comes to energy levels, objects prefer to be at their lowest possible levels. Our universe doesn't exist. The shape of the energy potential of the Higgs field is what keeps the universe from falling into the trap of dropping energy levels.
A graph of this energy potential would look like a mountain in the middle and two valleys on either side. Physicists believe that on either side of the hills there are even lower energy valleys. The measurement of the mass of the particle supports the idea that there is room for the field to decay to a lower level.
"The Higgs boson is a very precise microscope to study nature at the smallest scales, and at the same time it is a formidable telescope to access physics at very high energy scales."
— Fabiola Gianotti
Physicists call our vacuum a false vacuum because it wants to decay to a less powerful vacuum. Our universe is being held in a false vacuum by the valleys and hills of the Higgs field.
Over the course of time, the false vacuum will decay. Maybe quantum energy fluctuations will allow the false vacuum to climb over those 'hills' and roll down the slope on the other side, or perhaps the strange phenomenon of quantum tunneling will let it drill through the energy barrier.
The decay of the false vacuum would be bad for the universe because it would cause a wave to move at the speed of light and destroy everything. The current universe is thanks to the Higgs field, which holds vacuum decay at bay.
Researchers have been trying to pin down its life span for the past 10 years. The standard model predicts that the existence of the Higgs boson will last for just 10–22 seconds. This calculation has not been verified. Martin said it happened so quickly.
Physicists hope that the next operational phase on the LHC, dubbed Run 3, will serve as the much sought-after stopwatch.
"We hope that in an indirect way, we might be able to measure the lifespan of the particle," Martin said. "If we can measure the lifetime, it will give us more constraints on what particles are decaying into in the future."
It's possible that hidden particles of dark matter could be discovered if we understand how the Higgs boson breaks apart.
The significance of these implications led to the description of the Higgs boson as a crucial tool for probing the deep mysteries of particle physics. She said that the telescope to access physics at very high energy scales and the microscope to study nature at the smallest scales were similarities.
Physicists have been able to remove another particle from the list because of the discovery. Questions about the structure of matter in the universe, the fate of the universe, and how elementary particles relate to each other are raised by its existence.
The secret of the Higgs boson is still being kept. The Standard Model predicts everything that we have seen so far. "While this is interesting, it is also disappointing because we were hoping that the boson would help us see beyond the standard model."
If we want to explain phenomena that don't fit in the Standard Model, we need to move beyond it. After four years of upgrade, the LHC will once again tackle the mysteries of the Higgs boson.
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