Higgs Boson Discovery Has Consequences

Now confirming the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, physicists are wrestling with implications of actually finding it ~ the last undiscovered piece of the puzzle predicted by the so-called Standard Model, the reigning theory of particle physics.

LiveScience is listing what it sees as the six largest consequences of the discovery, listed here in abbreviated form:

1. The origin of mass

"The Higgs mechanism is the thing that allows us to understand how the particles acquire mass," said Joao Guimaraes da Costa, a physicist at Harvard. "If there was no such mechanism, then everything would be massless."

2. The Standard Model

The reigning theory of particle physics describes the universe's very small constituents. Every particle predicted by the Standard Model had been discovered ~ except one: the Higgs boson. "It's the missing piece in the Standard Model," Jonas Strandberg, a researcher at CERN said last year of the particle announcement. "So it would definitely be a confirmation that the theories we have now are right."

3. The electroweak force

The confirmation of the Higgs also helps to explain how two of the fundamental forces of the universe ~ the electromagnetic force that governs interactions between charged particles, and the weak force that's responsible for radioactive decay ~ can be unified.

4. Supersymmetry

This idea posits that every known particle has a "superpartner" particle with slightly different characteristics. Supersymmetry is attractive because it could help unify some of the other forces of nature, and even offers a candidate for the particle that makes up dark matter.

5. Validation of LHC

The newly announced finding offers major validation for the Large Hadron Collider and for the scientists who've worked on the search for many years.

6. Is the universe doomed?

The Higgs boson discovery opens the door to new calculations that weren't previously possible, scientists say, including one that suggests the universe is in for a cataclysm billions of years from now. "It may be the universe we live in is inherently unstable, and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out," added Lykken, a collaborator on the CMS experiment.

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Higgs Boson Spells Doom and Gloom

The long-sought Higgs boson might doom our universe to an unfortunate end, researchers say. The mass of the particle is a key ingredient in a calculation that predicts the future of space and time.

"This calculation tells you that many tens of billions of years from now there'll be a catastrophe," says Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. "It may be the universe we live in is inherently unstable, and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out."

The Higgs boson particle is a manifestation of an energy field pervading the universe called the Higgs field, which is thought to explain why particles have mass. After searching for decades for proof that this field and particle existed, physicists at the LHC announced in July 2012 that they'd discovered a particle whose properties strongly suggest it is the Higgs boson.

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Possible Ending to a Long Scientific Search

A section of CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

Leading physicists are saying it’s still too soon to know whether CERN’s newly discovered subatomic particle fits the description given by the Standard Model ~ the theory that has ruled physics for the last half-century ~ or whether it is an impostor, a single particle, or even the first of many particles yet to be discovered.

According to today's New York Times, CERN Director Rolf-Dieter Heuer’s exclamation earlier today of, “I think we have it,” signaled what is probably the beginning of the end for one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science. If scientists are lucky, the Times contends, the discovery could lead to a new understanding of how the universe began.

Confirmation of the Higgs boson or something very much like it would constitute a rendezvous with destiny for a generation of physicists who have believed in the boson for half a century without ever seeing it. And it affirms a grand view of a universe ruled by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws, but in which everything interesting in it, like ourselves, is a result of flaws or breaks in that symmetry.  

According to the Standard Model, which has ruled physics for 40 years, the Higgs boson is the only visible and particular manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles that would otherwise be massless with mass. Particles wading through it would gain heft.  

Without this Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, physicists say all the elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight. There would be neither atoms nor life. Physicists said that they would probably be studying the new Higgs particle for years. 

Any deviations from the simplest version of the boson — and there are hints of some already — could open a gateway to new phenomena and deeper theories that answer questions left hanging by the Standard Model: What, for example, is the dark matter that provides the gravitational scaffolding of galaxies? And why is the universe made of matter instead of antimatter?

 For now, some physicists are calling it a “Higgslike” particle. “It’s great to discover a new particle, but you have find out what its properties are,” said John Ellis, a theorist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

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What Would Finding 'God Particle' Mean?

Here renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku discusses the Higgs-Boson ~ also referred to as the "God particle" ~ and what its discovery would mean for physics.