Has the Higgs Boson Particle Field Been Hiding in Plain Sight?

sciencehabit writes with a link to the ScienceNow site, noting an article saying the Higgs boson may already have been found in previous observations of the known universe. A theorist at Michigan state is arguing that scientists may have already found evidence for the elusive particle. The key appears to be that the particles that make up the Higgs field are of various 'strengths', and some of those particles may tug on others very weakly. "The lightest Higgs can be very light indeed, but it would not have been seen at [CERN's Large Electron-Positron (LEP)], because LEP experimenters were looking for an energetic collision that made a Z that then spit out a Higgs. That wouldn't happen very often if the lightest Higgs and the Z hardly interact. 'Just within the simplest supersymmetric model, there's still room for Higgs that is missed,' Yuan says. However, this lightweight Higgs is not exactly the Higgs everyone is looking for, says Marcela Carena, a theorist at Fermilab. 'The Higgs they are talking about is not the one responsible for giving mass to the W and Z,' she says. It can't be because it hardly interacts with those particles, Carena says. Indeed, in Yuan's model, the role of mass-giver falls to one of the heavier Higgses, which is still heavier than the LEP limit, she notes."

Comments

the last place you look

[tverbeek]

Turns out it was under the couch all this time.

Re:the last place you look

[clonan]

The extra wieght of the Higgs particle is what makes the change fall out of my pocket!

I knew it wasn't me!!!

Re:the last place you look

[onion2k]

I've got one here on my desk. Curiously it looks, and smells, just like an orange.

Tastes like an orange too.

Actually, come to think of it, I think this might be an orange.

Re:the last place you look

[Hognoxious]

Search in reverse order - you'll find it quicker that way.

Re:the last place you look

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep ... Were all doomed!

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson_(fiction) "In the science fantasy series Lexx, one character points out that although all-out nuclear war sometimes destroys all life on planets as advanced as Earth, it is much more common for such planets to be obliterated by physicists attempting to determine the precise mass of the Higgs boson particle, since the moment the mass is known the planet will instantly collapse into a nugget of super-dense matter "roughly the size of a pea."

Re:the last place you look

[Anonymous Coward]

And why exactly would the world collapse to the size of your package?

Re:the last place you look

[SL Baur]

The extra wieght of the Higgs particle is what makes the change fall out of my pocket! Perhaps, but more importantly, it is not symmetric and has been known to attract left or right socks more strongly than the other. This explains the dryer effect.

Re:the last place you look

[vtcodger]

***Perhaps, but more importantly, it is not symmetric and has been known to attract left or right socks more strongly than the other. This explains the dryer effect.***

Doesn't the drier affect have to do with putting two pairs of black socks into the washer and getting three black socks and one blue one out of the drier? Perhaps you were thinking of the DB25 affect where when reassembling an elderly computer system you will -- with 50% probability -- find that when attempting to make the last connection you are trying to plug a male connector into a male socket?

For those that went "wtf?!"

[moogied]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_Boson

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[calebt3]

Give him a break. He's new here.

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[DirkGently]

So are you. ;-)

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[mortonda]

you too... ;)

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[DeVilla]

Quit tormenting the youngsters.

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[dreamchaser]

Y'all forgot to tell the kids to get off your lawns. Damn old farts...

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[Warbothong]

"...if it exists, the Higgs boson has an enormous effect on the world around us.[citation needed]"

Re:For those that went "wtf?!"

[RockWolf]

Someone pass me a rattle?

Yikes!

[Rgb465]

Am I really the only one worried that determining the precise weight of the Higgs Boson will result in the Earth being crushed into a tiny particle the size of a pea?

Re:Yikes!

[Yetihehe]

yes, no, maybe

Re:Yikes!

[Waffle Iron]

Am I really the only one worried that determining the precise weight of the Higgs Boson will result in the Earth being crushed into a tiny particle the size of a pea?

Perhaps, but in the process we'd obtain important new data that greatly reduces the uncertainty in the parameters of the Drake Equation.

Re:Higgses

[IndustrialComplex]

Nasty Hobbitses...and their mean Higgses make Precious feel so heavy.

The Higgs Boson

[TheBearBear]

From Wiki...

It is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed, but would help explain how otherwise
massless elementary particles, still manage to construct mass in matter. In particular, the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons

I always wondered what they use to measure the mass of elementary particles (not atoms). Can anyone explain? Also, maybe photons and higgs boson do have mass, but our instruments just aren't sensitive enough (kinda what the summary is saying)?

Re:The Higgs Boson

[clonan]

A lot of times they use charge. You can determine the charge of a particle and then place it in a known EM field and observe how quickly it reacts which gives you mass.

Re:The Higgs Boson

[dmitrybrant]

The mass of elementary particles is measured in units of energy (thank Albert Einstein for that connection), namely the electron-volt. Essentially, physicists look for the amount of energy it takes for a certain particle to come into existence. The photon does not have mass by definition, since it travels at the speed of light. The Higgs Boson, on the other hand, is expected to be quite massive.

Re:The Higgs Boson

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wondered what they use to measure the mass of elementary particles (not atoms). Can anyone explain? Mass, energy, and momentum are related by a simple equation. If you know the momentum and the energy of a particle, then you can determine its mass.

The momentum of a charged particle can be measured from the curvature of the particle's trajectory in a magnetic field.

Energy can be determined through various means, which usually have to do with measuring the energy given off when the particle slows down when going through matter. For example, you could have a leaded glass block. As a fast-moving electron goes through the glass, it gives up its kinetic energy as it interacts with the atoms in the block. Eventually the kinetic energy is turned into a proportionate amount of light.

A more unusual technique is to measure the velocity of a charged particle by using the Cerenkov effect.

Also, maybe photons and higgs boson do have mass, but our instruments just aren't sensitive enough (kinda what the summary is saying)? Photons may have mass, but experiments show that it would be very small. (Less than 6 x 10^-17 electron-volts) But the higgs, if it exists, surely has mass, because it is self-interacting, and it is interactions with the higgs field give mass to particles.

Re:The Higgs Boson

[mdmkolbe]

Mostly it comes down to conservation of mass/energy. If we know we put 3 electrons and 20GeV of energy into the reaction chamber and got out 2 electrons, 10GeV and one unknown particle then that unknown particle must have a combined mass/energy to balance things out. (Remember that E=mc^2 so mass could have been converted to energy and vice vesa.)

So how did they measure the mass of the first particle? As one of the sibling posts said, put an electrically charged particle into a static electric field and watch how fast the field moves the particle (this can be observed at the macroscopic scale using gas bubble chambers).

Of course the above requires you to know the charge of the particle, so how do we measure the charge of an elementary particle? Simple! Fill the air with neutrally charged oil droplets and "spray" them with the particle. Some droplets will pick up 1 particle and some will pickup 2 or 3 or 4. Put them in a static electric field and measure how strong the field has to be to suspend the droplets against the force of gravity. You don't have to know which ones picked up how many particle, you just have to measure the difference in the required field strength. (See the Oil-drop experiment; note measuring the mass of oil droplets is hard be macroscopically possible.)

So in summary: we measure particle mass in terms of the masses of other particles. The first particle's mass was measured in terms of it's electric charge. The first particle's electric charge was measured in terms of how much force it imparted on an oil droplet. The oil droplet's mass was measured relative to a lump of platinum-iridium sitting in Paris. That lump was just pointed to and called 1 kilogram.

Any questions?

Re:The Higgs Boson

[marcosdumay]

If you put a particle with known velocity and electrical charge in a known magnetical field, it will run on a circle. You can calculate its mass by the circle's radius.

At particle accelerators the magnetical field there is a given, since you need it to keep the particles inside the building while they are gaining speed.

Re:Higgses

[Shadow Wrought]

Higgses ...must be one of the ugliest plural forms I've recently encountered.

You say that now, but she'll look better after a couple of drinkses.

Re:Am I missing something?

[tylersoze]

Yep that is correct. The photon is the carrier of the electromagnetic force, and light is an electromagnetic wave. The force felt between charged particles is caused by the exchange of virtual photons. All fields can be thought of as made of quantized particles. In the case of the fundamental forces: Electromagnetism - photons, Gravity - graviton (theorized), Weak Force - W and Z bosons, Strong Force - 8 colored gluons.

will CERN become a theme park now?

[petes_PoV]

So they won't need their brand-spanking new accelerator after all!

Maybe we could put it to good use as a theme park ride instead. Imaging all those superconducting magnets accelerating your cart up to 99.99% of the speed of light - what a ride that would be.

With the relativistic effects, you might even be able to come out of the ride before you went in.

The fact that it operates in a vacuum might be a problem ... have to think about that.

Re:Am I missing something?

[tylersoze]

Another interesting thing is that the range of the force is determined by the mass of its carrier particles. Gravity and Electromagnetism have infinite range, whereas the Weak Force has a very small range due to the mass of the W and Z (which is suppose to come the Higgs). Now gluons are actually supposed to be massless, but the Strong Force is range is still limited due to the fact the gluons have color and change interact with themselves (it's the only force that gets *stronger* with distance) unlike the other carrier particles that don't carry the "charge" of their field.

They were looking where?

[shadowofwind]

"...the Higgs boson may already have been found in previous observations of the known universe." But what about in observations of the unknown universe, did they find anything there?

Re:Am I missing something?

[lazyforker]

Electric fields consist of photons? If that's not a typo of some kind, would someone care to explain? I think the author forgot to specify that the electric field is time-varying (to have an associated magnetic field). The combination of the two varying fields propagates as an electromagnetic wave ie light (photons). Take a look at Maxwell's Equations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_equations

Correction

[VenomousGecko]

Shouldn't "A theorist at Michigan state" be "A theorist at Michigan State University"? Adds clarification, for me at least.

Re:Dear fucking assholes (Slashdot editors)

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

This is real news for real nerds. This story requires reading of Leon Lederman's the God Particle to get to the point where any amount of explanation in the summary would help. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I'd be really, really impressed if anyone could write a summary for that.

Re:Am I missing something?

[mdmkolbe]

Even static electric and/or magnetic fields are transmitted via photons. They behave slightly differently than "regular" photons and so are called "virtual" photons, but they are no less real than the photons you are familiar with. (Explaining it further would require going into quantum theory.)

What's this ... ?

[MrNougat]

What's this ... behind your ear ... ?

Oh, look! It's a Higgs boson!

No, you're dead on

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric fields consist of photons?

Since nobody's made this point yet, I'll put it out there.

The statement is literally correct. Say you have a field in 3-space. That field itself is a 3-vector at every point in that space. When you make a fourier transform of the field, you get the field as a function of a momentum-like 3 vector. That vector is quantized, and the excitations of it are what we refer to as "photons". Add in special relativity, and you have the basics of quantum field theory.

Try the first chapter of Lahiri and Pal's "A First Book of Quantum Field Theory". If you've had undergrad calculus, it shouldn't be that bad.

This isn't the Higgs Boson you're looking for

[Mike Van Pelt]

This isn't the Higgs Boson you're looking for.

You can go about your business.

Move along.

Hiding right in front of us?

[PinkyDead]

Clearly the Higgs Boson was contained within an SEP field.

Which suggests that we are one step closer to actually creating an infinite improbability drive - the ramifications of which are... well I don't know, but they are at least big, possibly huge.

Re:Antiparticles / antimass?

[mdmkolbe]

What would happen to E=mc^2 if m is negative?

You get a negative energy.

This is actually possible near the event horizon of a spinning blackhole. The zero energy state around a spinning blackhole is a particular orbit (I believe due to frame dragging, but I'm not positive), but a slower orbit must have lower energy which thus must be negative energy. The Penrose process uses this trick to extract energy from a blackhole.

Re:Am I missing something?

[niklask]

I've never been 100% clear on this. Is the weak force really infinite but just drops off to effectively-zero faster than electricity and gravity to? Not really. Both electromagnetic and gravitational potentials have a simple 1/r dependence (because of massless mediating particles). If the mediating particle is massive then the potential is not as simple. Take the Yukawa potential which nicely describes pion exchange in the nucleus. It goes as exp(-mr)/r. Now, the Yukawa potential works for massive scalar fields. If the field is not scalar, like the W and Z bosons which are axial-vector bosons the potential is somewhat different, but the point is the same.

I've never seen an equation for weak or strong interactions corresponding to the Maxwell or Newton/Einstein equations for electricity and gravity. Is that because we just don't model weak force as a field because the particles don't move fast enough? Electromagnetic and weak interactions has been unified for a long time now and are nicely described by a Lagrangian. The strong interaction is much more complicated because of the self-coupling of the mediating particles. But that's not to say there is no Lagrangian.

Re:Am I missing something?

[tylersoze]

Nope that's not a typo either. :) The potential goes at 1/r, the force (which is the derivative) goes as 1/r^2.

Re:Am I missing something?

[niklask]

No typo. You have to differentiate between potential and force. Lets take the simple case of a scalar potential V(r) which is given by the integral over the vector field F(r) along some path C. Hence, V(r) is proportional to 1/r for both gravity and electromagnetism.

Re:Am I missing something?

[ColdWetDog]

Lets take the simple case of a scalar potential V(r) which is given by the integral over the vector field F(r) along some path C. Hence, V(r) is proportional to 1/r for both gravity and electromagnetism.

Simple .

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Time long ago, galaxy far away

[Latent Heat]

. . . these are not the Higgs' bosons you are look for.

Re:Dear fucking assholes (Slashdot editors)

[DigitAl56K]

I have no idea what you're talking about. I only read the summary and I completely understand that there are different sizes of these Higgs Boson thingies that can be heavy or light, but the light ones are the red-headed step children of the higgs boson family in that nobody really wants one, and that they may or may not interact with things in particle accelerators and/or each other, and that most of them are named with letters near the end of the alphabet.

I now feel fully qualified to provide insightful comments and am ready to receive your positive mod points!

Re:Am I missing something?

[doctorfaustus]

I don't think that word means what you think it means.
 
It's all relative, friend.

Re:Am I missing something?

[tubapro12]

Don't forget, Really Really Strong Force is 64 brown grues.

(At first glacne, I saw "grues" in place of your "gluons" for some reason).

Re:Am I missing something?

[ColdWetDog]

It's all relative, friend.

Absolutely!