What’s the Higgs Boson, and Why Do We Care About It? Like most brilliant discoveries there first must be a question. Mendeleev and Einstein were presented a problem, a missing piece, and with that they created a question. With that question in mind, a hypothesis, and often, a belated answer are formed. Peter Higgs, an English born theoretical physicist, came up with an answer to Physicists’ most salient question: “Where do particles get their mass”? Unlike Mendeleev and Einstein, Higgs’s work was not over. His question had been answered but not proven. To understand how Higgs solved his question, it’s essential to first understand the most elemental model of physics, the Standard Model of particle mix. The standard model explains how the building blocks of matter interact, the building blocks of matter are particles, particles are made up of subatomic particles. These subatomic particles are split into two groups: leptons, and quarks. The leptons and quarks are the further split into generations, the difference between each generation is the mass of the subatomic particles within it. Generation one consists of the lightest of the particles, and all stable matter in the universe can be found in generation one. So, even though physicist were capable of telling their audience that generations were split by mass, they were incapable of explaining why certain particles had their given mass. Other holes are also present in the Standard Model. The four forces at work in the universe are strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational. All can be found within the Standard Model except gravitational force. The discovery of the Higgs may help fill the void in the Standard model. Gravity pulls on things proportional to their mass, so by figuring out the reason behind a particle's mass, perhaps, gravity can be added into the Standard Model. So what exactly did Higgs give as his answer to the question of mass? Well, Higgs said that there was an energy field that all subatomic particles had to interact with. He creatively named it the Higgs field. The more a particle reacted with the field, the greater its mass would be. However, sheer size of a particle has nothing to do with its mass, for example, the lightest of subatomic particles is the electron, while one of the heaviest is the top quark. Although the mass of the top quark is exponentially larger than that of the electron, their masses are exactly the same. The Higgs field is made up of billions of Higgs Bosons, just like matter is made up of millions of particles. With the Higgs field matter has mass, the earth sticks together, and physicist’s dreams are met, without it, we quite literally would have nothing. So how did Mr. Higgs prove his findings to be correct? Well, the short answer is he didn’t. Instead, thousands of physicists from all over the globe came together to create the biggest machine ever built by human beings, the Large Hadron Collider. At an incredible five stories tall it took almost 30 years to finish the project.WHEN WAS IT COMPLETED? The LHC was setup to send information to 100,000 computer all across the globe. The LHC is located in Geneva Switzerland. It was initially going to be built in the U.S., but Congress decided that federal taxes could be better spent on other issues. The LHC has four different sections each with a separate goal in mind. The section designated to finding the Higgs Boson was called ATLAS. The way the LHC works is it spins two groups of protons around in separate directions. The protons spin until they are almost at the speed of light and when they reach this speed they are set to collide together. ATLAS is built to take a snapshot right when the collision occurs and members of the ATLAS team hope to find the Higgs Boson, and other undiscovered particles. After many setbacks, such as a helium explosion, the LHC was set to collide the protons on July 4th, 2012. The first test was a success, and in a conference meeting a week later the head scientist at the LHC broke the news to the world: the Higgs Boson had been found!. Mr. Higgs could finally hang his name up with other great scientist such as Mendeleev and Einstein, because, unlike many, his opinion became fact. The cost of the LHC was ten billion dollars - more than the Titanic and the A-bombs combined. Why would a government spend so much money on a science experiment? There is no financial gain from the finding of the Higgs, but there are countless of answered questions and even more newly thought of questions. And there is a new look on how our universe came to be. The LHC collision is similar to the Big Bang in that physicists can discover how the world came to be and attempt to understand basic laws of nature. Thanks to the LHC the opening of door one gave physicists the key to opening an infinite number of other doors.
