Confirmation of the Higgs boson, or something very like it, would
constitute a rendezvous with destiny for a generation of physicists
who've believed in the boson without ever seeing it.
According to the Standard Model of Physics, the Higgs boson is the only visible and particular manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles that would otherwise be massless with mass. Particles wading through it would gain heft.
Without this Higgs field, or something like it, physicists say all elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light. There would be neither atoms nor life. Physicists said they'd study the new Higgs particle for years. Any deviations from the simplest version of the boson could open a gateway to new phenomena and deeper theories that answer questions left hanging by the Standard Model: What, for example, is dark matter that provides gravitational scaffolding of galaxies? Why is the universe made of matter instead of antimatter?
"If the boson is not acting standard, then that will imply that there is more to the story — more particles, maybe more forces around the corner," Neal Weiner of New York University says.
One intriguing candidate for the next theory they have been on the watch for is called supersymmetry, "SUSY" for short, which would come with a new laundry list of particles to be discovered, one of which might be the source of dark matter. In supersymmetry there are at least two Higgs bosons. Scientists say: "The whole world thinks there is one Higgs, but there could be many of them."
Wednesday's announcement is also an impressive opening act for the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest physics machine, which collides protons and only began operating two years ago. It is still running at only half power.
Physicists had been holding their breaths and perhaps icing the champagne ever since last December. Two teams of about 3,000 physicists each — one named Atlas, led by Fabiola Gianotti and the other CMS, led by Joe Incandela — operate giant detectors in the collider, sorting the debris from the primordial fireballs left after proton collisions. Last winter they both reported hints of the same particle. They were not able, however, to rule out the possibility that it was a statistical fluke. Since then the collider has more than doubled the number of collisions it has recorded.
The new results capped three weeks of feverish speculation as the physicists, who had been sworn to secrecy, did a break-neck analysis of some 800 trillion proton-proton collisions over the last two years. In the end, the Cern council decided that the historic announcement should come from the lab's own turf first.
Up until last weekend, physicists from inside were reporting that they did not know what the outcome would be, though many were having fun with the speculation. "HiggsRumors" became one of the most popular hashtags on Twitter. The particle acquired its own iPhone app, a game called "Agent Higgs." Expectations soared when it was learned that the five surviving originators of the Higgs boson theory, including Peter Higgs, had been invited to the Cern news conference.
The December signal was no fluke. Like Omar Sharif materializing out of a distant sandstorm into a man on horseback in the movie "Lawrence of Arabia," what was once a hint of a signal has grown over the last year, until it practically jumps off the chart, according to those who have seen it.
According to the Standard Model of Physics, the Higgs boson is the only visible and particular manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles that would otherwise be massless with mass. Particles wading through it would gain heft.
Without this Higgs field, or something like it, physicists say all elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light. There would be neither atoms nor life. Physicists said they'd study the new Higgs particle for years. Any deviations from the simplest version of the boson could open a gateway to new phenomena and deeper theories that answer questions left hanging by the Standard Model: What, for example, is dark matter that provides gravitational scaffolding of galaxies? Why is the universe made of matter instead of antimatter?
"If the boson is not acting standard, then that will imply that there is more to the story — more particles, maybe more forces around the corner," Neal Weiner of New York University says.
One intriguing candidate for the next theory they have been on the watch for is called supersymmetry, "SUSY" for short, which would come with a new laundry list of particles to be discovered, one of which might be the source of dark matter. In supersymmetry there are at least two Higgs bosons. Scientists say: "The whole world thinks there is one Higgs, but there could be many of them."
Wednesday's announcement is also an impressive opening act for the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest physics machine, which collides protons and only began operating two years ago. It is still running at only half power.
Physicists had been holding their breaths and perhaps icing the champagne ever since last December. Two teams of about 3,000 physicists each — one named Atlas, led by Fabiola Gianotti and the other CMS, led by Joe Incandela — operate giant detectors in the collider, sorting the debris from the primordial fireballs left after proton collisions. Last winter they both reported hints of the same particle. They were not able, however, to rule out the possibility that it was a statistical fluke. Since then the collider has more than doubled the number of collisions it has recorded.
The new results capped three weeks of feverish speculation as the physicists, who had been sworn to secrecy, did a break-neck analysis of some 800 trillion proton-proton collisions over the last two years. In the end, the Cern council decided that the historic announcement should come from the lab's own turf first.
Up until last weekend, physicists from inside were reporting that they did not know what the outcome would be, though many were having fun with the speculation. "HiggsRumors" became one of the most popular hashtags on Twitter. The particle acquired its own iPhone app, a game called "Agent Higgs." Expectations soared when it was learned that the five surviving originators of the Higgs boson theory, including Peter Higgs, had been invited to the Cern news conference.
The December signal was no fluke. Like Omar Sharif materializing out of a distant sandstorm into a man on horseback in the movie "Lawrence of Arabia," what was once a hint of a signal has grown over the last year, until it practically jumps off the chart, according to those who have seen it.
©2011 The New York Times News Service
No comments:
Post a Comment