THE GOD PARTICLE

Preeti Dey

B. Sc 3^rd Semester(Physics Major)

Have you ever thought about why you weigh? Why does matter weigh something instead of nothing? Why the atoms that make up your body and everything else in the world …

Previously, the origin of mass was not even considered a problem and it was simply assumed that an object had mass. But when scientists began probing objects at smaller and smaller scales, they discovered that it was not quite as simple as that. According to the standard model, fundamental particles should weigh nothing at all. The standard model describes the behavior and interactions of all of the most fundamental particles we have seen. The model was developed throughout the 20^th century. Over the years, physicists have ticked these particles one by one. Now they were left with just one remaining unfound particle called “Higgs boson”. The Higgs is entirely hypothetical. It can explain the preponderance of matter over antimatter in the cosmos or it might yield a formula that would unite gravity with three other fundamental forces. Other than these Higgs could be the emissary of a universal force field that confers mass on matter. This field extends throughout the universe and interacts with the particles in such a way that they get some mass. After an interaction the field leaves behind a tell-tale sign – the Higgs boson. Finding a Higgs boson would prove that Higgs field exists. The more a particle interacts with this field, the heavier it becomes. Particles like the photon that do not interact with it are left behind with no mass. A problem that had been for many years was that no experiment had observed the Higgs boson to confirm the theory.

On 4^th July 2012, a subatomic particle in the mass region around 125 GeV was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations based on collisions in the Large Hardon Collider(LHC) at CERN and it was subsequently confirmed to match the expected properties of a Higgs boson over the following years.

A Higgs particle is produced in a proton-proton collision. The LHC accelerates beams of particles like protons to collide with other protons. When protons collide with such large energies at the LHC, the collision results in a shower of various particles, and Higgs boson is one of them.

These are also known as ‘God particles’ because according to the theory, it’s the physical proof of an invisible, universe-wide field that gives mass to all matter, that have mass, such as electrons, protons, etc. and also it is the picture of how God made the universe, all depends on finding the Higgs boson.