Questions

The biggest question I will have to answer is what is the higgs boson? In the most simple explanation higgs boson, also known as the “god particle”, is the particle that gives matter mass. Finding it 2012 revolutionized physicist ideas of the origin of mass. The higgs boson interacts with the Higgs field and this gives particles mass. The larger the particle the more it interacts with the field and the more mass it has. How is a particle detected? Using the Atlas detector of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva Switzerland. The LHC was built in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometers (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 meters (574 ft.) beneath the ground. It accelerates particles at nearly the speed of light around the 27 kilometer circle and Atlas is a super computer that can read the data of the particle collision. How does colliding particles get this particle? Einstein’s famous equation E=mc² tell us that mass is just another form of energy. By speeding the particles up to nearly the speed of light, the collision turns this energy into many particles and it is just a matter of Atlas capturing this data. The question of why is it named higgs? The particle is named after Dr. Peter Higgs after he predicted such a particle should exist in 1964. He thought an energy field permeated the entire universe, later called the higgs field.