The death of Nobel prize-winning British physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed a new particle — ‘Higgs Boson’ – will leave a void in the field of particle physics. Almost 12 years ago, on July 4, 2012, Higgs became an iconic figure after he discovered that collisions between particles at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) showed the existence of Higgs Boson.
Higgs was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 2013 for his work in 1964 that showed how the Boson (subatomic particle) is the fundamental force-carrying particle of the Higgs field, which is responsible for granting other particles their mass.
The particle was finally discovered in 2012 by researchers at the LHC — the most powerful particle accelerator in the world — located at the European particle physics laboratory CERN, Switzerland.
What is Higgs Boson?
The Higgs Boson has a mass of 125 billion electron volts, that is, it is 130 times more massive than a proton, according to CERN. The Higgs Boson is the only elementary particle with no spin.
A boson is a “force carrier” particle that comes into play when particles interact with each other, with a boson exchanged during this interaction. For example, when two electrons interact they exchange a photon — the force-carrying particle of electromagnetic fields, according to Space.com.
The name ‘God Particle’ was solidified upon its discovery. The term is often connected to Nobel prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman referring to the Higgs Boson as the “Goddamn Particle” with regards to how difficult it was to detect.
According to Business Insider, when Lederman authored a book on the Higgs Boson in the 1990s, the title was to be ‘The Goddamn Particle’ but the publishers changed it to ‘The God Particle’, and a connection with religion was drawn, which still bothers physicists.
Without the Higgs field and the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism, all fundamental particles would race around the universe at the speed of light. This theory doesn’t just explain why particles have mass but also, why they have different masses. Particles that interact with the Higgs field more strongly are granted greater masses.
This mass-granting phenomenon also only applies to fundamental particles like electrons and quarks. Particles like protons — made up of quarks — get most of their mass from the binding energy that holds their constituents together.
How Higgs Boson was Discovered
The 20th Century kept many physicists wondering about particle physicals, which was a field in a nascent stage. By the end of the century, physicists started to wonder why some particles have mass and other didn’t.
The carriers of atomic force, W and Z bosons, should be massless —the fact that the weak force appeared strong over short distances and weak over long distances meant they couldn’t be massless. If they were, it would risk breaking an important rule of physics called symmetry.
According to CERN, you can think of the symmetry problem as analogous to a pencil standing on its tip — a symmetrical system — suddenly tipping to point in a preferred direction, thus destroying its symmetry. So, Higgs, Francois Englert and Robert Brout proposed a solution that could “trick” nature into breaking the symmetry.
Higgs and his colleagues believed when the universe was formed, it might have been filled with “Higgs field” in a symmetrical but unstable like a precariously balanced pencil. In that fraction of a second, the “Higgs field” would find a stable configuration, but break the symmetry. This created the ‘Brout-Engert-Higgs’ mechanism, which grants mass to bosons.
It was later discovered that the Higgs field would grant mass to many other fundamental particles, and the strength of these interactions would give different mass to different particles.
In order to confirm a particle that would act as a “messenger” for the Higgs field – the Higgs Boson – a 27 km long largest particle accelerator LHC was built at the cost of around $4.75 billion.
“Higgs’ work is a major reason why the LHC was constructed in the first place,” said CERN experimental high energy physicist Nima Zardoshti as quoted by Space.com. “His predictions provided some of the crucial theoretical guidance as to the energy reach required by the LHC in order to potentially find new physics.”
Peter Higgs Contribution to Modern Physics
The discovery of the Higgs Boson signalled the need for physicists to begin exploring physics beyond parameters they were used to. “He was ahead of his time,” many scientists believed.
Higgs was a member of the Royal Society and a Companion of Honour, and spent most of his professional life at Edinburgh University, which set up the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics in his honour in 2012.
“Besides his outstanding contributions to particle physics, Peter was a very special person, an immensely inspiring figure for physicists around the world, a man of rare modesty, a great teacher and someone who explained physics in a very simple yet profound way,” said Fabiola Gianotti, director-general of CERN in an obituary posted on the organisation’s website, as quoted by the Nature journal.
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Higgs leaves two sons, Chris and Jonny, his daughter-in-law Suzanne and two grandchildren. His wife, Jody, a linguistics lecturer from whom he was separated, died in 2008. Higgs was 94 years old when he died.