Physics may be on the verge of proving the existence of an essential building block of the current model of the structure of matter–or it may be forced to go back to the theoretical drawing board. What is at stake is a search for the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle, which the standard model of particle physics states is the particle that acts to form the Higgs field, which gives particles their mass.
The New York Times recently reported on rumors that the Fermilab near Chicago may have discovered the Higgs boson, and the growing excitement over a new accelerator at CERN in Europe, which was specifically designed to find the Higgs boson, and that will soon begin operations:
Earlier this summer, the physics world was jolted by a rumor that a team of scientists from the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill., had found a bump in their data that might be a legendary particle that has haunted physicists for a generation. It is known colloquially as the Higgs boson and sometimes grandly as the “God particle.” According to the Standard Model that has ruled physics for 30 years, the Higgs endows elementary particles in the universe with mass.
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According to the Standard Model, a suite of equations that describe all the forces but gravity, elementary particles and forces are born equal and without mass. Some then acquire mass by wading through a sort of a cosmic molasses called the Higgs field (named after the physicist Peter Higgs) the way a V.I.P. acquires an entourage pushing through a cocktail party.
Unfortunately, the model does not say how heavy the Higgs boson itself — the quantum personification of this field — should be. And so physicists have to search for it the old-fashioned train-wreck way, by smashing subatomic particles together to create primordial fireballs and then seeing what materializes out.
The Higgs, if formed, would decay into smaller jets of quarks or other particles, depending on its mass. The heavier it is, the more kinds of particles it can decay into. These would be recorded and counted by the detectors.
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The history of physics is full of bumps that could have been revolutionary but have disappeared like ghosts in the night, and this rumor of a possible Higgs sighting was not even the first this year. Most physicists who have heard this rumor think that this bump is likely to be another of those disappearing anomalies, like the trimuons that frustrated Dr. Weinberg. But then these same physicists point out that you never know.
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As the analyses proceed and the Tevatron hums its trillion-electron-volt tune, this is a summer of rumors, hope and hype. Whatever the outcome for this particular Higgs rumor, the buzz about it illuminates the galloping expectations, tensions and rivalries roiling physicists as they await the inauguration next summer of the Large Hadron Collider, a giant accelerator at CERN, the nuclear laboratory outside Geneva expressly designed to find the Higgs particle and explore new realms of nature.
Even if the Fermilab did indeed find a bump that proves the existence of the Higgs particle, it will require a re-examination of the Standard Model, and may even offer evidence for supersymmetry, a theory with little empirical proof to date:
If it is a Higgs, theorists say, it is probably not the one prescribed by the Standard Model, which would not be produced plentifully enough to be seen yet.
The leading alternative is that it would be one of five Higgs bosons predicted by a theory called supersymmetry, which theorists have been yearning for as the next step toward a more all-embracing, unified theory of nature. One bonus of supersymmetry is that it predicts the existence of more, yet undiscovered elementary particles, one of which might be the mysterious dark matter that binds galaxies together in the universe. All this would fall into the lap of the Large Hadron Collider scientists, if it exists, which is one reason the CERN physicists will be happy no matter what the outcome.
Read the entire article here. And Tommaso Dorigo, from the University of Padua in Italy, has a blog largely devoted to the search for the Higgs particle here.
So what does this all have to do with the Episcopal Church? Other than an important discovery of God’s creation, not much. Still, the Higgs boson is called the God particle. And there is a contingent of your Lead editors (known affectionately as “the nerds” or “Chuck and Nicholas”) who think this stuff is cool.