"Higgs Boson: this is probably physics's most searched for particle over the last 40 years.
Yet for something so sought-after, the particle itself doesn't actually do very much! The reason the Higgs boson interests us is because it's existence is evidence of the BEH (Brout-Englert-Higgs) field that explains why fundamental particles have a mass.
The existence of an excited state of the BEH field - the Higgs boson - was predicted in 1964 by Peter Higgs and it was discovered at CERN by experiments at the large hadron collider on 2012."
On further displays it pursues the implication of the BEH field. The idea comes from why we see select quantities of mass in particles. Trying to understand why we don't see a continuous range of masses in subatomic particles. To which it poses the question of maybe there are but in parallel universes.
To conclude: I clarified that the Higgs boson is an instance of the BEH field being excited. Proving that the theory behind the BEH field has truth. Also that the theory is about why matter has mass.
This was something I also really enjoyed about visiting CERN. There were a lot of concepts that I had learned about in modern physics, but seeing them explained in this environment really helped clarify and cement these ideas in my memory better.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to think kids in the future may be taught this in their high school physics classes. Unlike most of us who didn't learn about the discovery because it was so new.
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