When beams of particles moving in opposite directions are crashed together, it concentrates an enormous amount of energy into a tiny volume of space. In fact, in its current configuration, the LHC moves protons to 0.999999991c, which is about 10 km/h slower than the speed of light. By accelerating particles – like protons – to huge velocities, they give them an enormous amount of kinetic energy. The job of a particle accelerator is to convert energy into matter, via the formula e=mc2. (Photo Credit: CERN)Īnd this is where the Large Hadron Collider comes in. The accelerator ring is 27 km (17 miles) in circumference. LHC is as much as 175 meters (574 ft) below ground on the Frence-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. Cross-section of the Large Hadron Collider where its detectors are placed and collisions occur. The field itself is undetectable, but if you could somehow detect the corresponding Higgs particles, you could assume the existence of the field. The more mass an object has, the more it interacts with this Higgs field.Īnd just like the other fundamental forces in the Universe, the Higgs field should have a corresponding boson to communicate the force – this is the Higgs boson. In the 1960s, physicist Peter Higgs predicted that there must be some kind of field that permeates all of space and interacts with matter, sort of like a fish swimming through water. Why does anything have mass at all, or inertia? Why does the amount of physical “stuff” in an object define how easy it is to get moving, or how hard it is to make it stop? One of the biggest unsolved mysteries in physics was the concept of mass. Credit: PBS NOVA, Fermilab, Office of Science, United States Department of Energy, Particle Data GroupĪgain, this is the Standard Model, and it accurately describes the laws of nature as we see them around us. Either way, there’s a Nobel Prize in it for you. Prove that gravity doesn’t have a boson, and you can also get a Nobel Prize. So, if you’re looking for a Nobel Prize, find a gravity boson and it’s yours. Although it’s one of the fundamental forces of the Universe, nobody has discovered a boson particle that communicates this force. Then there’s the gluon, which communicates the strong nuclear force and the W and Z bosons which communicate the weak nuclear force. The one you’re probably familiar with is the photon, which communicates the electromagnetic force.
The bosons are the particles that communicate the forces of the Universe.
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