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Understanding of the Way the Fundamental Particles that Make Up the Universe Behave
:: 12 July, 2008
OVER the centuries, Edinburgh has produced some of history's most remarkable scientists, inventors and mathematicians.
Among those who have shaped the world in which we live are Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, James Clerk Maxwell, without whom we might have no mobile phones or microwaves, and John Napier, who created logarithms.
But while these men's names are known far beyond the academic world, there is a man residing in Edinburgh today with perhaps an even bigger claim to fame.
Living quietly in his New Town flat, this grey-haired gentleman with an unassuming smile is no limelight-seeker and few of his neighbours know the significance of his work. But Peter Higgs (pictured below) is in fact the man credited with figuring out how the universe works.
A very private man who prefers the company of his former Edinburgh University colleagues to public acclaim, he is about to be thrust into the limelight never- theless for a theory he came up with 44 years ago.
That insight has shaped our understanding of the way the fundamental particles that make up the universe behave.
His theory has been accepted by the scientific community for decades, although there has never been concrete proof of it.
That all may be about to change spectacularly, thanks to one of the largest, most expensive science experiments in history.
Higgs predicted the existence of an invisible force field which some objects pass through more easily than others, making some heavier than others. Central to his theory is the existence of a particle he named – and still calls – the scalar boson. Others call it the Higgs boson or "the God particle", and the professor – an atheist – is said to like neither name.
The only problem is that no one has ever been able to identify the boson despite its existence being accepted by scientists worldwide.
However, it is hoped the culmination of a £3 billion experiment at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva – in a 17-mile long underground tunnel – will soon find the elusive boson.
There, inside the cavernous Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scientists plan later this month, or early next, to smash particles together at almost the speed of light, in an effort to recreate the Big Bang which is believed to have created the universe.
Among the debris of this collision they hope to discover the proof of Prof Higgs' theory.
If he is proved right – an event Prof Higgs has said he will celebrate modestly by opening "a bottle of something" – there is little doubt that the 79-year-old physician will be awarded a Nobel Prize.
There is growing anticipation around the world of what will happen when the massive LHC particle accelarator is switched on, not least at Edinburgh University's physics labs and at Prof Higgs' New Town home.
Professor Richard Kenway, who worked with Higgs for a number of years at Edinburgh University, said: "There's been a serious build-up of excitement over the past 12 months as Cern edges towards switching on the (LHC] machine.
"It's not going to be a fast pro-cess as there's quite a lot of steps to go through first and we will be watching it with baited breath.
"It completes the theory that we have had now since the early-70s, so in some sense it's a huge vindication of the theories that physicists have been building up to explain."
Prof Kenway accompanied Higgs on a tour of Cern earlier this year, where some starstruck staff even asked for his autograph. One physicist there, John Ellis, even compared him with Einstein.
Although not immune from the growing excitement surrounding the experiment, Prof Kenway says his former colleague is "taking it all in his stride".
"The world of physics would say he, and colleagues who worked with him, probably should have been recognised by a Nobel Prize, but the rules say you don't get the prize unless there's an experimental discovery," he said.
"I think Peter is enjoying himself now, although he's taking it all in his stride. He is quite modest and recognises the contributions that others made to the theory and the effort being made to confirm it. He views it as the final piece in the jigsaw for the theory."
Prof Higgs – who was raised in Bristol and moved to Edinburgh in his early thirties, making the Capital his home ever since – is said to be "a little worried" about the spotlight which will inevitably fall on him should the experiment succeed.
He is, though, excited at the prospect of what else the experiment might throw up.
Prof Kenway says there are "a bunch of unanswered questions" which it may go some way to answering".
He added: "Everybody is hoping that something else will be found alongside it, something completely new, something that changes the way in which we think about the universe.
"For instance, we don't really understand where gravity fits into it. The Higgs boson explains everything else, but not quantum gravity, so we are thinking that perhaps we will observe some-thing, and that's the most exciting prospect."
PROFESSOR'S PLACE IN HISTORY
PROFESSOR Peter Higgs' place in history rests on a theory he came up with almost half a century ago.
His breakthrough came after returning to his New Town flat following an aborted weekend camping trip to the Highlands with his wife Jo. The question he had been pondering was one of the most basic problems of theoretical physics: what makes an object, like a brick, for instance, heavy when its atoms are weightless?
Higgs came up with an elegant theory suggesting the existence of a force field which all particles must pass through. Some are slowed down more than others by the field, making objects heavier and lighter. He also proposed that a particle exists, which he called a scalar boson – re-named the Higgs boson in the early 1970s – which clings to other particles as they pass through the field.
Higgs' work is now considered a fundamental part of the standard model which scientists use to explain how the universe works.
The problem is, the Higgs boson has never actually been identified, although the massive Cern experiment on the French-Swiss border this summer may change all that.
About Higgs Boson
The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed, but would help explain how otherwise massless elementary particles still manage to construct mass in matter. In particular, it would explain the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons. Elementary particle masses, and the differences between electromagnetism (caused by the photon) and the weak force (caused by the W and Z bosons), are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter; thus, if it exists, the Higgs boson has an enormous effect on the world around us.
As of yet, no experiment has directly detected the existence of the Higgs boson, but this may change as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN becomes operational. The Higgs mechanism, which gives mass to vector bosons, was theorized in 1964 by Peter Higgs, François Englert and Robert Brout, working from the ideas of Philip Anderson, and independently by G. S. Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and T. W. B. Kibble. Higgs proposed that the existence of a massive scalar particle could be a test of the theory, a remark added to his Physical Review letter at the suggestion of the referee. Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam were the first to apply the Higgs mechanism to the electroweak symmetry breaking. The electroweak theory predicts a neutral particle whose mass is not far from the W and Z bosons.
The Higgs boson particle is one quantum component of the theoretical Higgs Field. In empty space, the Higgs field has an amplitude different from zero. This is also known as a "non-zero vacuum expectation value", and illustrates the concept that there is no such thing as a completely “empty” vacuum. The existence of this non-zero vacuum expectation plays a fundamental role: it gives mass to every elementary particle which has mass, including the Higgs boson itself. In particular, the acquisition of a non-zero vacuum expectation value spontaneously breaks electroweak gauge symmetry, which scientists often refer to as the Higgs mechanism. This is the simplest mechanism capable of giving mass to the gauge bosons while remaining compatible with gauge theories. In essence, this field is analogous to a pool of molasses that “sticks” to the otherwise massless fundamental particles which travel through the field, converting them into particles with mass which form the basis of the atom.
In the Standard Model, the Higgs field consists of two neutral and two charged component fields. Both of the charged components and one of the neutral fields are Goldstone bosons, which are massless and act as the longitudinal third-polarization components of the massive W+, W-, and Z bosons. The quantum of the remaining neutral component corresponds to the massive Higgs boson. Since the Higgs field is a scalar field, the Higgs boson has no spin and has no intrinsic angular momentum. The Higgs boson is also its own antiparticle and is CP-even.
About Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator complex that will collide opposing beams of 7 TeV protons together in order to explore the validity and limitations of the highly successful current theoretical picture for particle physics, the standard model, which is known however to break down at sufficiently high energy. It is being built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies under the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland, where it is undergoing commissioning while being cooled down to its final operating temperature of approximately 2K. The first beams are due for injection in August 2008, with the first collisions planned to take place about two months later. The LHC will become the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. The LHC is being funded and built in collaboration with over two thousand physicists from thirty-four countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.
When activated, it is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and "missing links" in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would be a significant step in the search for a Grand Unified Theory, which seeks to unify three of the four known fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, leaving out only gravity. The Higgs boson may also help to explain why gravitation is so weak compared to the other three forces. In addition to the Higgs boson, other theorized novel particles that might be produced, and for which searches are planned, include strangelets, micro black holes, magnetic monopoles and supersymmetric particles.
The collider is contained in a circular tunnel with a circumference of 27 kilometres (17 mi) at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 metres underground. The 3.8 metre diameter, concrete-lined tunnel, constructed between 1983 and 1988, was formerly used to house the LEP, an electron-positron collider. It crosses the border between Switzerland and France at four points, although most of it is in France. Surface buildings hold ancillary equipment such as compressors, ventilation equipment, control electronics and refrigeration plants.
The collider tunnel contains two adjacent beam pipes, each containing a proton beam (a proton is one type of hadron). The two beams travel in opposite directions around the ring. Some 1232 bending magnets keep the beams on their circular path, while an additional 392 focusing magnets are used to keep the beams focused, in order to maximize the chances of interaction between the particles in the four intersection points, where the two beams will cross. In total, over 1600 superconducting magnets are installed, with most weighing over 27 tonnes. Approximately 96 tonnes of liquid helium is needed to keep the magnets at the operating temperature, making the LHC the largest cryogenic facility in the world at liquid helium temperature.
Tags: Meet the master of the universe , Higgs boson , Large Hadron Collider (LHC) , European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) ,
