The 'Goddamn Particle'

This one is bound to be a really crazy ride, confusing, eye opening and one that challenges our very beliefs of existence. It needs the explanation it deserves, so brace for this read.

Higgs Boson/The God Particle

The universe. A 13.5-billion-year-old, ever expanding bubble that comprises of all of space and time. But what created the universe those 13.5 billion years ago?

The Big bang!

But your firework doesn’t burst without someone lighting the fuse, right? Well then ‘Who’ or ‘What’ set off the cosmic fuse? The answer for that question defines all of reality and changes our perception of the world and beyond. 

Scientists believe that our universe was initially a gas of particles with no mass at all, perfectly symmetrical, but useless. But then how did all these particles gain mass? How did that perfect crystal of a universe end up as the broken one we see today? One with stars, planets, moons, comets and what not. How did things go from nothing to everything? So, again the question, how did the cosmic fuse go off?

It was triggered by a Higgs boson like particle. Simple. Wait. NOT SIMPLE! This ‘Thing’ is the reason why Everything exists, and its complicated, big time.

For long we had thought that the atom was the smallest particle in the universe. But then we split the atom to discover even smaller particles; electrons, protons and neutrons. Electrons are fundamental particles (particles that can’t be further divided), but not protons and neutrons. They are made up of other fundamental particles called Quarks. According to our current understanding, called the Standard model, there are two types of fundamental particles namely Fermions (that make up matter) and Bosons (that carry forces). These particles are often arranged based on their properties such as mass, but scientists couldn’t figure out where that mass came from or why they have that mass. 

Enter Higgs field. The Higgs field is a field of energy that is thought to exist in every region of the universe. When a particle interacts with Higgs field, it gains mass. The more it interacts, the more mass it gains. Sort of like, the angrier the hulk is, the stronger he gets. Without the Higgs field, nothing would exist in the universe. But there was a catch. We couldn’t prove any of this. But on the 4th of July 2012, something phenomenal happened at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. The scientists at LHC slammed two beams of photons at trillions of eV (electron volt) or at 99.99% the speed of light and discovered the Higgs boson particle! 

This discovery was so ground breaking not just in the field of particle physics, but also in our understanding of the universe. These particles are produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, and thus it proved the existence of the Higgs field. It is a particle like the Higgs boson, that kick started everything, the universe, the stars, planets, the atoms, you, and me; and that is why some people call it ‘The God Particle’, even though it was first referred to as the ‘The Goddamn Particle’ by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, poking fun at how difficult it was to detect these particles. It was the former name that caught on and scientists still cringe when they hear it.

This discovery takes us to the moment of creation itself, maybe even before that. We could rewind or fast forward the cosmic celluloid. This is mind blowing! But the finding of the Higgs Boson has also frowned quite a few faces all over the world. It is the beginning of a long, complicated conversation between religion and science. Science may well be able to disprove religion, and that is why I said at the beginning, “It changes our perception of the world”.

Scary Question Series

Once the LHC started operating, many questions have been arising concerning the safety of the tests being held there. Let me explain some of them.

Q? Will the Large Hadron Collider produce a microscopic black hole and cause doomsday?

A: Some people speculate that the powerful crash of subatomic particles that are racing through the LHC at the speed of light could produce a microscopic black hole, which could eventually suck up the whole planet 😐. But physicists beg to differ. The laws of gravity alone prevent such a formation, and even if something like that does happen, the microscopic black hole would be so unstable that it would be immediately disintegrate before it had time to consume any of the matter on the planet. 

Q? Will this produce a ‘Strangelet’ that could annihilate us?

A: A ‘Strangelet’ is a hypothetical particle that could convert our planet into a lump of dead ‘strange matter’ (Explaining what strange matter is requires an entire article on its own, so, just know that if strange matter in the right form hit Earth, it would destroy everything). And no, this hypothesis is also not true. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, another particle accelerator has been operating safely for years, and its setup makes it even more prone to the ‘Strangelet’ hypothesis. Moreover, so much heat is produced in the Large Hadron Collider that it would instantly melt any ‘Strangelets’ formed and so the likelihood of creating strange matter in a particle accelerator would be as low as making "an ice cube in a furnace”, says officials.

Science is often so bewildering. We are still scratching the surface and we have little clue of what might be lying ahead of us. But with more understanding of the Higgs Boson, we might be able to do more than just scratch the surface.

And when the scientists are in on the action, Sciendrome will be on its tail!

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