The Higgs boson and the LHC

The Higgs boson and the LHC: at last, a clue to the universe?

Today, scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider will reveal what they’ve learnt about the 'God Particle’. It’s another exciting step forward in physics, says Sue Nelson .

Energy release: conceptual computer artwork of a reaction at the atomic level Photo: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

After 30 years in the shadow of biology, physics is in the news as never before. One of life’s big questions – why there is any “stuff” in the universe at all – may be on the verge of being solved. In addition, a tiny particle has been caught breaking Einstein’s cosmic speed limit, and, as a result, travelling backwards in time is being seriously discussed. To cap it all, according to rampant internet rumours, physicists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva are expected to reveal today whether or not they have evidence of the infamous “God Particle”, or Higgs boson.

The Higgs boson is a subatomic particle, the existence of which was proposed by the British physicist Peter Higgs in the Sixties. It is thought to endow everything in the universe with mass. Although Sir Isaac Newton discovered that mass is the source of gravity, and Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc² showed that mass is also a form of energy, what mass is and where it comes from remains mysterious.

The Higgs mechanism proposes that mass arises when particles, such as protons, interact with the Higgs field, a sort of force field that permeates everything. The Higgs boson acts as the go-between, allowing the Higgs field to interact with particles that have mass. If the LHC has found the Higgs boson, this will be a momentous event in physics. However, today’s announcement is not expected to deliver a definitive “no” or “yes” that the Higgs exists, but to report evidence suggesting that it does.

So this may see the beginning of the end of one mystery, but other mysteries remain. Much of the excitement in physics at the moment concerns unknowns. This year’s Nobel Prize, for example, went to three scientists who, in 1998, discovered that the cosmos is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, an expansion driven by a mysterious force called dark energy. Even though this research won the Nobel, no one knows what dark energy actually is.

One suggestion is that dark energy is simply another force, which, for some reason, is growing stronger over time. Another that it is a leftover from whatever came before the Big Bang; the truth is that we don’t have a clue.

K A Solaman