Higgs Boson- Mystery Behind:

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God’s Particle found-This statement has been doing rounds for the past 5-6 months. I tried to understand this mystery myself, ending in this. Think this can provide a general idea about the topic.

Let us a start with the basic history towards the GOD.

Standard model:

§  The standard model, a work of many physicists of the 20^th century is by far the most successful model of particle physics.

§  A theory giving the nuances of electromagnetic forces, weak and strong nuclear interactions, governing the dynamics of subatomic particles, was compiled around 1970s.

§  Generally we know there are two kinds of particles, elementary i.e they are the most basic which cannot be further divided and composite particles that are made up of combinations of elementary particles. 

§  Standard model divides these fundamental particles in to fermions and BOSONS based on a physical property (like mass, shape) called spin (rotation about an axis), i.e Bosons have integer spin (0, 1, 2) and fermions have half integer spin (1/2, 3/2).

§  Standard model gives that all material around us is made up of 12 matter particles(also called fermions) which includes particles called quarks and leptons (electron is one amongst leptons) their interactions governed by four fundamental forces (Electromagnetic, gravity etc.) (BOSONS are involved here).

§  Bosons are seen force carrier particles by the standard model, examples of which include particles like gluons, photons, Higgs boson.

What is CERN, the large Hadron collider all about:

· The European Organization for Nuclear Research also known as CERN is the world’s largest nuclear physics laboratory carrying out various experiments, situated at Geneva, along France-Swiss border.
·  It has been operating several particle accelerators the latest one being the Large Hadron collider.

·  Particle accelerators are devices to accelerate particles to high energies for atomic and nuclear studies. They work on the same principle of CRT of your television, wherein a beam of electrons coming out of heated filament is accelerated by an electric field meanwhile a magnetic field focusses it in to a narrow one.

· These accelerators may be circular where the beam is energized in stages, travelling in loops or linear travelling in straight paths.

· The large Hadron collider is one such particle accelerator where two beams of sub atomic particles –hadrons or lead ions are accelerated to speeds nearing speed of light using superconducting coils and magnets and are made to collide.

· This collision is sought to emulate the Big bang which created the universe and study the particles which will be emitted during the collision using particle detectors.

Finally we are on to the GODs particle:

·         The standard model defined all the forces of nature but found no place to incorporate the phenomenon of mass for particles.

·         This was overcome when three scientists Peter Higgs, Robert Brout and Francois Englert put that after Big bang particles had no mass, after some time as the universe cooled an invisible field called Higgs field which was present everywhere was formed.

·         Particles which interacted with this field gained mass in proportion to their interaction. More interaction more mass, no interaction no mass at all.

·         Now this was a hypothesis, scientists are yet to find this particle study its characteristics. Scientists believe if at all higgs boson exists it should be emitted during the collision experiments of Hadron collider.

·         Another problem these higgs particles are said to decay immediately after collisions and they are expecting only to find their footprints. Recently they have announced only such an approximation ”a particle with similar properties of higgs found, have to be confirmed with further experimentation”.

·         If scientists fail in this attempt probably the next generation has to study an entirely new physics book devoid of standard model.

Some other Facts relating to CERN:

·         Not only hadron collider six other experiments are currently going on in CERN under international collaborations:

ALICE	·         To study quark gluon plasma. ·         Atoms made of protons and neutrons, which in turn are held together by quarks. ·         At ALICE collisions under very high temperatures are expected to melt the protons, neutrons releasing the quarks, which ALICE is expected to study.
ATLAS	·        General purpose detector ·        To study higgs and various other mechanisms
CMS	·        Compact Muon solenoid ·        To study Higgs, extra dimensions and dark matter.
LHCb	·        Large Hadron collider beauty: ·        To study b quark, anti-matter.
TOTEM	·        TOTal Elastic and Diffractive Cross Section measurement ·        To study forward particles not available to general experiments.
LHCf	·        Large hadron collider hadron forward ·        To study cosmic rays under laboratory conditions.

·         Indian connection:

o    We now have Archana sharma a scientist of Indian origin, working at CERN involved in CMS experiment over there. She has been involved in this since 1987.

o   The very name Boson is given in honour of satyendranath bose an Indian Mathematical physicist who along with Einstein was instrumental in defining characteristics of bosons. Satyendranath Bose born on 1 January 1894 in Kolkata.  He was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954 by the Government of India.

Basics:

Big Bang:(Wiki)

                    The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the Universe to cool and resulted in its present continuously expanding state. According to the most recent measurements and observations, the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.75 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the Universe.