Feb 23 2009
A Collider Conundrum
Well, the boffins at CERN have announced that the Large Hadron Collider, launched with such fanfare last September, won’t be back up till later in year. While small armies of engineers swarm the CERN complex to fix the supercollider, another collider— the Tevatron—is quietly working away in the background. Run by Fermilab, CERN’s American counterpart, the two centres enjoy a friendly rivalry of sorts. Rendered obsolete by the LHC, the 25 year old Tevatron was expected to retire gracefully and cease operations by the year 2010. But speculation that the scientists at Fermilab may have discovered a new particle previously unknown to physics proves that the Tevatron still has not outlived its use, and has further intensified the race to find the Higgs boson.
Popularised as “The God Particle” by some 
overzealous journalists, the Higgs boson is the theoretical particle that “carries” mass, much like how the photon is the particle that “carries” light. Its existence was proposed over forty years ago by physicist Peter Higgs.
Based on our current models of understanding, particles possess the mass they do due to the way they travel through the Higgs field. To borrow an analogy, imagine that the Higgs field is a giant puddle of mud. Some objects like leaves float on the surface of the mud, while others, like rocks, sink. The objects that float are our mass-less particles like photons, while the objects that sink are the particles that possess mass, like protons or neutrons. The faster a particle “sinks” through the Higgs field, the larger the its mass. Finding evidence for the Higg’s existence would prove the authenticity of The Standard Model, and we would be one step closer to finding an ultimate model of our universe.
It comes as no surprise then, that international fame and prestige will go to the first 
organization that finds concrete evidence for the Higgs’ existence; to the victor go the spoils. The world of academia is highly competitive, and is engulfed in more drama than your average high school. Take the (also friendly) rivalry between Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin. Wallace is generally acknowledged as the co-creator of the theory of natural selection, but because Darwin was the first to publish it, it is Darwin who has become a household name, and Wallace a footnote in history. A similar controversy surrounds the naming of the Higgs Boson. Around the same time that Higgs made his proposal, two Belgian physicists, Robert Brout and Francois Englert, reached the same conclusion using entirely different mathematics. Soon after getting their work published however, the two Belgians found their work sidelined, as Higgs had managed to get his work published in one of America’s leading physics journals.
Seen like this, the intense rivalry (or friendly jockying) between CERN and Fermilab becomes clearer. Yet, the two organisations must, for knowledge’s sake, also work together. Ultimately, in order for their results to hold any water in the peer-driven scientific community, the findings of one must be checked and verified by the other.
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Professional scientists are an interesting bunch. On the one hand, there seems to be a sincere desire to learn about the mysteries of Nature, whatever they may be. On the other hand, there is plenty of satisfaction that comes from good old fashioned human competition.
The “God Particle” is indeed a ridiculous description.
Also, it is interesting that we talk about the Higgs Particle as if it had already been discovered. I think this comes from past successes in particle physics where predicted particles really were eventually seen.
Also, I don’t think Darwin and Wallace were quite the same in their views. My understanding is that Darwin’s views have been the most consistent with current understandings of evolution.
I love that CERN scientists are “boffins”!
By reading this post, I wondered why exactly the Higgs boson is so important to The Standard Model, and how exactly the Large Hadron Collider constructed by CERN tries to discover this particle. Afterwards, I investigated the parts of The Standard Model and its importance to modern science.
Firstly, the Large Hadron Collider tries to collide particles to create an overall idea of the shape and properties of the subatomic particles. This is like throwing balls at the walls in a darkened cave to predict the surroundings that you cannot see. Also, by using the Collider, scientists can recreate conditions following the Big Bang, which will help find particles that could have decomposed to quickly for us to observe before. With these experiments, scientists hope to find the Higgs boson, the last part of The Standard Model which has not been proven to exist.
The Standard Model contains the three of the fundamental interactions(excluding gravity), and the two basic particles in the universe(quarks and leptons). Particles in The Standard Model acquire mass with their interactions with the Higgs boson and the Higgs field. By finding the Higgs boson, scientists can find other particles predicted by extensions of The Standard Model. The Higgs boson is a large step in completing a model of the universe. However, not only the fundamental particles interact with the Higgs field. The W and Z bosons, which make up the weak force, are gauge bosons, which act as carriers of forces of the fundamental interactions. Even these originally massless measures of forces gain mass when they interact with the Higgs field.
This prompts many questions, such as if the Higgs boson actually is what determines mass and if the role of the Higgs boson is being misinterpreted. The W and Z bosons have mass for fractions of a second(about 3×10−25 seconds), and quickly decays into quarks, leptons or neutrinos. If the W and Z bosons, measures of forces, can have mass, how come the photon and the gluon(another force carrier) do not have mass? Is it possible that the period in which photons and gluons have mass is even shorter than that of the W and Z bosons? Also, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, mass is made of energy, which means that even the photons and gluons should have mass. Are forces just another form of particles? The Higgs boson’s role of The Standard Model does not give mass to these forces. Is it possible that all forces have mass, and that the Higgs boson and the Higgs field can only perceive these forces in a certain way? Is the interaction with the Higgs boson an inaccurate representation of mass? Just like for some gases, the fact that you cannot perceive with your five senses does that mean that it is not there. Hopefully, that if we discover the Higgs particle, these questions will eventually be resolved. If the Higgs particle is proven to not exist, the base of The Standard Model would change. We would have to change our approach in our observations of these subatomic particles and forces.