What Now For The Higgs Boson?

we're on our way to CERN in Geneva and this is your mark cameraman and we should be coming up on it that's the dome that's a famous cerned oh my bad this is pretty exciting on July 4th here at CERN and historic announcement was made a new particle had been discovered most likely the sought-after Higgs boson as a layman I would now say I think we have it you agree the finding made news around the world in boson de Higgs Anubis on Hicks earth on the booze Louise elbow thought it was only DX s honor and led to an outpouring of emotion from the normally restrained particle physics community for the discoverers themselves it was particularly momentous Wow I mean I've never seen physicists like this it really looks beautiful I cannot believe how beautiful it is it had to cry how beautiful it is that's why we're here essentially you know that that's that that's that's the reason why I'm doing particle physics but now that this particle has been found what's left to do at the Large Hadron Collider let's find out our current understanding of the universe is based on the modestly named a standard model a theory of all fundamental matter particles and their interactions virtually all of the standard model has been verified apart from one crucial element what gives matter its mass and to be clear that is absolutely critically important even to our daily existence because if an electron would be massless it could not be bound to a proton you could not have an atom and then you know sort of all of you know the Stars the planets chemistry light not exist wouldn't exist because instead of electrons bound to protons in hydrogen atoms and in and in larger atoms instead you would just have electrons whizzing off to infinity in the standard model mass is explained by the Higgs mechanism of which the Higgs boson is only one part for example you've probably heard that the Higgs boson gives mass to the other subatomic particles but if that were true shouldn't there be Higgs bosons everywhere I mean why would it be so difficult to create and detect them well in truth it's not the particle itself that gives mass to the they're particles it's the Higgs field you can think of the Higgs field as a huge sea of honey that fills all space some particles are able to travel through it unimpeded whilst others interact with it slowing down in the process and that translates into mass when enough high energy is added to the field fleeting Higgs bosons are created so in order to discover the Higgs particle we needed to invest energy by the collision in the higgs field and create the Higgs particle out of it and then we know that indeed we have a X and that's what this incredible machine does using powerful magnets the Large Hadron Collider whizzes two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 27 kilometer circular tunnel when the protons collide their energy can be converted into the mass of new particles like the Higgs boson short-lived these particles decay quickly and it's their decay products which are then analyzed by massive detectors this is the giant apparatus at the CMS detector it's one of two major detectors on the beam line where the protons collide you can actually see a life-size picture of the CMS detector I am standing above the beam line and so there's protons whizzing around underneath my feet right now 90 meters under the ground at speeds that are basically the speed of light 99.99999 9% the speed of light you may as well just be the speed of light but of course a proton can never reach that speed these are some big toys the other big experiment examining proton collisions is called Atlas the teams at Atlas and CMS each made up of about 3,000 scientists work independently in a sort of friendly rivalry actually friendly yes of course it is I mean we what we always say is that of course it's essential that if if there's a major discovery which is made that it's confirmed ultimately by the two experiments and independently and that's why the discovery announced earlier this year was so dramatic both detectors saw the same results more or less simultaneously protons are bags of other particles when they smash together a mess of new particles is created and it's the pattern of the debris that provides the answers what they saw was evidence of a new particle with a mass of between 125 and 126 Giga electron volts then we say these two large blobs of energy in the calorimeter and you can see them over here if you added those two bits of energy together what total energy would you get I think in this one you get 125 GeV so that seems to be exactly what would be exciting if it's a with gamma gamma but the question now is if it is a Higgs is it the Higgs as predicted by the standard model are you willing to make a bet about what kind of Higgs boson this do you think it's the Standard Model Higgs wow that's a difficult one no I wouldn't bet my life on I might bet my life that day we discovered the Higgs but I wouldn't bet my life that the easiest and modern Higgs it's very difficult to tell all we know is this there we almost know nothing about its properties and its properties are key really to tell us exactly what it is so to find out the LHC will conduct many more collisions and this should allow scientists to determine the properties of the new particle if it is not standard model heads we may be able to tell that early we could even tell that this year as an example both experiments are a bit too many photons too many times the Higgs was decaying into photons more than you expect more than you'd expect them in the case of out strangely that's exactly what these guys are hoping for that it doesn't fit the model perfectly that it's not the Standard Model Higgs let's say the reason for doing science is of course we're looking for answers but generating more questions is an inevitable and and one of the most exciting pieces of the scientific procedure and what would that help you determine I mean if it's not Standard Model Higgs that's a big thing if it's not standard while haze then we know that there's new physics for sure and if the new physics is along the lines that we expect then we have something pretty profound as a possibility one would be additional spatial dimensions ok that's one possibility another would be really almost a mirror image of the entire universe in terms of particles that's supersymmetry and and these things would be extremely profound whether it turns out to be the Standard Model Higgs Corps or something even more profound one thing is for sure the discovery of this new particle is a huge milestone in the long quest to uncover the fundamental laws of nature

Channel: Veritasium

Views: 1,141,238

Rating: 4.948411 out of 5

Keywords: Higgs Boson Higgs, boson, standard model, Large Hadron Collider, particle, mass, fundamental, veritasium, science, physics, LHC

Id: 649iUqrOKuE

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Theemuts]

Not really an update, in my opinion...