| Click Below to Select a Force: |
Mediating Boson: | Relative Strength: | Effective Range of the Force: |
| Strong Nuclear | Gluon | 1 | 10-17 cm. This is about the same size as a proton. |
| Electromagnetic | Photon | 1/137th | Essentially, this force operates over an infinite distance. |
| Weak Nuclear | W± & Z | 10-13 | 10-20 cm. This is about 1/1000th the size of a proton. |
| Higgs | Higgs | Unkown | Unkown |
Forces & Bosons -
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Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
Deborah & William Hillyard
The standard model does not explain what causes particles and some bosons to have masses. In particular, the Electroweak theory shows that the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces are manifestations of the same underlying force at very high temperatures, so why is the photon massless while the intermediate vector bosons, the W+, W- and Z, are very heavy at around 90 times the proton mass? There must have been a spontaneous symmetry breaking as the hot universe cooled. Current theory attribute the symmetry breaking to the Higgs Field which requires a new particle and force mediator called the Higgs boson. It proposes that space is filled with the background Higgs field, called the Higgs condensate, and it is interaction with this background field that generates mass. Think of when you walk through water; your legs feel much heavier than when you walk through air. On the other hand, there is very little difference when moving a knife blade, edge first, through air or water. A photon or gluon is like the knife blade, so does not acquire mass, whereas the intermediate vector bosons are more like your leg, and do acquire mass. The Higgs has zero spin, no charge and is its own antiparticle.
It is named for Peter Higgs who first proposed the mechanism in 1964. A number of other researchers also suggested it around the same time, but Higgs seems to have won the naming! It also gives mass to leptons and quarks, and explains why the "W" & "Z" intermediate vector bosons have mass but the photon and gluons do not.
The CMS and the ATLAS groups at the Large Hadron Collider both announced that they found evidence of a new boson on July 4th 2012. CMS found the mass to be 125.3 ± 0.6 GeV, while the Atlas team found the mass to be 126.5 GeV. It appears to be "consistent with" the expected bahaviour of the Higgs Boson with both experiments quoting a confidence level of 5 sigma, or less than one part in one million of an error. By July 31st 2012, Atlas had improved their results to 5.9 sigma or better than one chance in 500 million of an error. Thus, it is generally confirmed that a new boson has been discovered, but it is not confirmed that it is the Higgs.
It is named for Peter Higgs who first proposed the mechanism in 1964. A number of other researchers also suggested it around the same time, but Higgs seems to have won the naming! It also gives mass to leptons and quarks, and explains why the "W" & "Z" intermediate vector bosons have mass but the photon and gluons do not.
The CMS and the ATLAS groups at the Large Hadron Collider both announced that they found evidence of a new boson on July 4th 2012. CMS found the mass to be 125.3 ± 0.6 GeV, while the Atlas team found the mass to be 126.5 GeV. It appears to be "consistent with" the expected bahaviour of the Higgs Boson with both experiments quoting a confidence level of 5 sigma, or less than one part in one million of an error. By July 31st 2012, Atlas had improved their results to 5.9 sigma or better than one chance in 500 million of an error. Thus, it is generally confirmed that a new boson has been discovered, but it is not confirmed that it is the Higgs.
Higgs - The Higgs Boson
Physics
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Standard Model
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