10 years since ‘god particle’: How the world of physics has evolved

Source: The post is based on the article “10 years since ‘god particle’: How the world of physics has evolved” published in Down To Earth on 6th July 2022.

What is the News?

The Large Hadron Collider was successfully relaunched for the third time — 10 years after it enabled scientists to find the elusive ‘God particle’ or Higgs Boson. 

What is Higgs Boson?

The Higgs boson, also known as the God Particle, is the fundamental particle associated with the Higgs field, a field that gives mass to other fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks.

When was Higgs Boson discovered?

The Higgs boson was proposed in 1964 by Peter Higgs, François Englert and four other theorists to explain why certain particles have mass. 

Scientists confirmed its existence in 2012 through the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider(LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. 

This discovery led to the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Higgs and Englert.

Facts about Higgs Boson

The Higgs boson has a mass of 125 billion electron volts  —  meaning it is 130 times more massive than a proton. 

It is chargeless with zero spin  —  a quantum mechanical equivalent to angular momentum. It is also the only elementary particle with no spin.

Higgs Boson has a short lifespan. Once it is created during the particle collisions, it sticks around for merely less than a trillionth of a billionth of a second or, more precisely, 1.6 x 10-22 seconds.