God Particle

Source-This post on God Particle has been created based on the article “Physicist Peter Higgs passes away: What is the ‘God particle’, which he theorised in 1960s?” published in “The Indian Express” on 11 April 2024.

Why in the news?

Nobel prize-winner Physicist Peter Higgs, known for proposing the Higgs boson or the God particle, has passed away at 94.

About Higgs Boson

Introduction-The Higgs boson is the fundamental force-carrying particle of the Higgs field, which is responsible for granting fundamental particles their mass.

Discovery-The particle was finally discovered on July 4, 2012, by researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). LHC is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world which is  located at the European particle physics laboratory CERN, Switzerland.

Conformation of Higgs Field-The LHC confirmed the existence of the Higgs field and the mechanism that gives rise to mass, and thus completed the standard model of particle physics.

Standard Model of particle physics-The Higgs boson is one of the 17 fundamental particles in the Standard Model. This is the best theory about the behaviours of the universe’s most basic building blocks.

Features:

1) It has a mass of 125 billion electron volts, meaning it is 130 times more massive than a proton.

2) It is also chargeless with zero spin, a quantum mechanical equivalent to angular momentum.

3) It is the only elementary particle with no spin.

What is a boson?

It is a “force carrier” particle that comes into play when particles interact with each other, with a boson exchanged during this interaction. For example- when two electrons interact, they exchange a photon, the force-carrying particle of electromagnetic fields.

Read more-Bose-Einstein Quantum “Fifth State Of Matter” Seen For 1st Time In Space

UPSC Syllabus-Science & Technology.