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If you were following the news last October, you probably heard or read about the Nobel Committee’s choices for the 2013 series of Nobel Prizes. From Chemistry to Literature, the public was awestruck at the amazing accomplishments of last year’s recipients. Yet, no single award stood in more distinction – or was more easily predicted – as this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, which was awarded to the prominent physicists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert.
Like many winners of the Prize, Higgs and Englert were rewarded for theories they had formulated years ago – in this case, about fifty years ago, in 1964. So, what did these scientists do to overwhelmingly sweep consideration for the Prize?
Well, they were the first scientists
to theorize the God Particle. As
daunting as that sounds, the God Particle, also known as the Higgs Boson, is
actually smaller than you’d expect. In
fact, it’s smaller than any subatomic particle currently known to man. But the reason that it derives so much
importance – more importance than any of the other hundreds of particles that
were discovered during the twentieth century – is its ability to explain the
origins of mass.1
In 1964, Higgs and Englert (along
with several other scientists only a few weeks later) described a new type of
quantum field, one which pervaded all of space.
This field was essentially a basic form of energy; when particles passed
through the field, they gained energy in small quantities until they
accumulated that energy as mass (remember, by Einstein’s famous E=mc^2, we know
that there is a relationship between energy and mass). This field, appropriately, is known as the
Higgs field, and the “quanta” (plural of “quantum”) of energy with which the
field interacts with other particles are known as Higgs Bosons.2
Mass seems to be an important
concept in physics in and of itself, but this idea does not explain fully the
significance of the Higgs Boson. Rather,
to explore this issue further, we need to analyze the importance of the
Standard Model of particle physics.
The Standard Model is an attempt to
understand and unify how particles interact with each other through a series of
forces. It is considered the most
successful of the several theories proposed to encompass all of the many
discoveries that have been made over the past two centuries. Yet, the Standard Model relies on one
fundamental principle: accumulation of mass through the Higgs field. Since the creation of the theory, scientists
have merely assumed the existence of the Higgs Boson and used it to justify the
Standard Model; well, now there’s proof.3
So, readers, raise a hearty “congratulations” to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert, the winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.”5 For such a small particle, it truly is a remarkable phenomenon and an equally remarkable discovery. The world of particle physics will never be the same.
References:
1. Overbye, Dennis. "For Nobel, They Can Thank the ‘God Particle’." The New York Times. N.p., 08 Oct. 2013. Web.
2. Thompson, Nick. "What Is the Higgs Boson and Why Is It Important?" CNN. Cable News Network, 08 Oct. 2013. Web.
3. Brumfield, Ben. "'God Particle' Theorists Receive Nobel Prize in Physics." CNN. Cable News Network, 08 Oct. 2013. Web.
4. "CERN Accelerating Science." The Search for the Higgs Boson. N.p., n.d. Web.
5. "All Nobel Prizes in Physics." NobelPrize.org. The Nobel Foundation, n.d. Web.
Image Source (Higgs and Englert): Daily Mail
Image Source (Proton-Proton Collision): CNN