This last week the world of Physics was in all the papers and news, the Higgs had been found. As I listened to many descriptions by people who did not fully or partly understand what they were saying, I wondered if this ‘partial’ was really a partial at all. If this entity exists, and still they are saying they think it is real, then it will be one of the smallest if not the smallest object in the universe. What makes the Higgs so special is that it provides the mass to partials and without this the universe would not exist as we know it. But is the Higgs really a bit of matter like say a grain of sand? Is it just a field of energy that affects other partials in a way that they appear to have mass?
When talking and thinking about these things it is hard for us to imagine how they are, we cannot see or feel them, so our ‘view’ is simply a perception of what our instruments tell us. A Boson is a type of partial like a Quark, Higgs is its name. Boson particles are governed by Bose-Einstein statistics. Bosons differ significantly from a group of subatomic particles known as Fermions in that there is no limit to the number that can occupy the same quantum state. What this means is that a boson with the same energy can occupy the same place in space as another boson. So even more basic, think of two sheets of paper that each are 50% transparent. One sheet is a Higgs and the other is another particle like a Fermion. Let's assume that iindividually they are not opaque so you can't see them, but if the two are over-lapped then they become opaque. Think of it as if the Higgs has the mass and the Fermion doesn't, put them together and it appears the Fermion has mass, but really it is the Higgs mass we see. So all mass in the universe is from Higgs fields, with out the Higgs there would be no matter in the universe, hence none of us. That is why they call it the God particle, it makes everything exists.
The last great Boson to be discovered is the Graviton. A graviton is a hypothetical elementary particle that mediates the force of gravitation in the framework of quantum field theory. There has been great success with quantum field theory that with now the discovery (if indeed it is true) of the Higgs, the Graviton should also exist since the theory predicts it.
When talking and thinking about these things it is hard for us to imagine how they are, we cannot see or feel them, so our ‘view’ is simply a perception of what our instruments tell us. A Boson is a type of partial like a Quark, Higgs is its name. Boson particles are governed by Bose-Einstein statistics. Bosons differ significantly from a group of subatomic particles known as Fermions in that there is no limit to the number that can occupy the same quantum state. What this means is that a boson with the same energy can occupy the same place in space as another boson. So even more basic, think of two sheets of paper that each are 50% transparent. One sheet is a Higgs and the other is another particle like a Fermion. Let's assume that iindividually they are not opaque so you can't see them, but if the two are over-lapped then they become opaque. Think of it as if the Higgs has the mass and the Fermion doesn't, put them together and it appears the Fermion has mass, but really it is the Higgs mass we see. So all mass in the universe is from Higgs fields, with out the Higgs there would be no matter in the universe, hence none of us. That is why they call it the God particle, it makes everything exists.
The last great Boson to be discovered is the Graviton. A graviton is a hypothetical elementary particle that mediates the force of gravitation in the framework of quantum field theory. There has been great success with quantum field theory that with now the discovery (if indeed it is true) of the Higgs, the Graviton should also exist since the theory predicts it.
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