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Asked by slamdunkeroo to Sam, Claire on 18 Jun 2013.
Question: What is the God Particle?
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Sam Geen answered on 18 Jun 2013:
So Claire probably knows more about this than me, because she works where it was (more or less) discovered, so it would be worth asking her to see what she has to say. But here goes my attempt to explain it:
The Higgs Boson is sometimes called the God Particle. It’s a particle that gives other particles mass – i.e. it makes them heavy. Without it, all particles would be as light as, well, light, and would have zero mass.
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Claire Lee answered on 20 Jun 2013:
Hi! 🙂
So, before I start, I just want to say that physicists don’t really call it the God particle. In fact, the term “God particle” came about because of a book about the Higgs boson by physicist Leon Lederman, who actually titled the book “The Goddamn particle”. But the publishers didn’t like that so they changed the name!
Anyway!
So we have the universe, which is made up of a bunch of different particles. Kind of like lego blocks. The universe comes with a basic set of 16 blocks, and from those 16 blocks we can build up everything that we know of in the universe today. Like a good lego set, it also comes with a set of instructions on how we’re allowed to put the blocks together, which ones can go with which to build what. This set of blocks and the instructions is called The Standard Model. (pretty boring name, huh?)
Our Standard Model lego block set has been fantastic – it has been tested over and over again in different experiments and each time our lego blocks and instructions have held up. Everything looks fantastic with our lego block model of the universe!
Except, that we know it’s NOT correct!
(For example, we don’t have a gravity block in there. We just haven’t been able to figure out how to add that block in and not break our set of instructions. That one is still in progress!)
Also – our set of instructions says that all the lego blocks have no mass at all. That’s clearly incorrect, because things like you and I and Sam’s computer and the sun and stuff all have mass. Some particles don’t, sure, like the photon, but most do.
So we have to add something to our set of instructions that tells us why some particles have mass. Luckily, this one has been done, about 40 years ago, and we call it the Higgs field. The Higgs field is an extra page in our lego instructions that tells us about something called “symmetry breaking”, but basically it just tells us which particles have mass and why some are heavier than others.
Now to go along with the extra page in our instructions, we need an extra block, too. (In fact, depending on which version of the instruction manual you use, we can have a few extra blocks). This extra block(s) is the block that carries out the Higgs instructions on the other particles, giving them mass. The more the Higgs block connects with the other particles, the more mass it has.
(for example – our set of instructions says that the Higgs block is not allowed to connect with the photon block, so the photon has no mass. But lots of them must connect up with the top quark block, so the top quark is really heavy).
We call this Higgs block the Higgs boson – and the reason why it was called the “Goddamn particle” is because it was so infuriatingly hard to find! (it took us 40 years!)
Comments
drogers commented on :
But why do so many journalists use the phrase “God Particle”? Is it them just being lazy or afraid to find out more?
Sam commented on :
It’s a silly expression that appeared in a popular science book once*, and that people used again because it sounded cool. It’s certainly very important for making the universe the way it is (without mass, we wouldn’t exist), but it’s nothing to do with God or religion.
Journalists are typically not the best at science unless they’re specialist science reporters, and even then it’s easy to get things wrong as a lot of science can be complicated. Newspapers also need to make money, and often make things sound more exciting or scary than they are to get people to read more newspapers. Newspapers are also cutting costs for various reasons, which means that reporters have less time to understand what they’re reporting or to find out facts. The MMR vaccine scandal a while ago was a good example of this – the only evidence that MMR caused autism was from a doctor who turned out to be a fraud, but newspapers reported it because they didn’t understand the issue properly and scaring people made money. People didn’t vaccinate their babies because they thought it would give them autism (it wouldn’t) and so they got sick because they weren’t protected from diseases. Babies have died because newspapers were either stupid or greedy or both. This thing makes me pretty angry, but that’s the way the world is, I suppose. The book Flat Earth News by Nick Davies is a pretty good summary of when newspapers have said the wrong thing for whatever reason: http://www.flatearthnews.net/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle:_If_the_Universe_Is_the_Answer,_What_Is_the_Question%3F
Sam commented on :
(I should add – there are plenty of journalists doing excellent work despite the difficulty of doing the job these days. Just be careful about believing everything you read!)
slamdunkeroo commented on :
Thanks your time and answering my question!
drogers commented on :
Thank you for the replies.