By Aarav Fatnani
In the field of science, there is a reputation for lines like ‘God is fake!’ or ‘God is a social construct!’ to be thrown around a lot. With that being said, it is perplexing to see something be referred to with His name in physics (to the dismay of both scientists and religious officials); however, it is referred to as such for good reason.
This particle is known as the Higgs Boson Particle, named after the Nobel laureate Peter Ware Higgs, who theorized the Higgs Field in 1964 as an explanation to why some fundamental particles have mass. It was finally discovered in 2012 after a series of experiments by ATLAS and CMS at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.
The Higgs Boson Particle is a fundamental particle associated with the Higgs Field, which interacts with the Higgs Boson Particle, as well as other fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks (which combine to make protons and neutrons). Both of these particles have mass and their masses determine how much they resist changing their speed or their position when it encounters a force, which is integral to the entire field of physics. While these fundamental particles have mass, it is important to know that there are other fundamental particles that do not have mass, namely the photon (which carries light and the electromagnetic force) and the gluon (which carries the strong nuclear force that allows quarks to combine into protons and neutrons); since these two particles are massless, they do not interact with the Higgs Field.
Obviously, this discovery had ramifications throughout the scientific community. It confirmed The Standard Model of Physics - authoritative theory for particle physics that was also referred to as the famous Theory of Everything, which combined quantum mechanics and classical physics into a unified approach to explain the laws of the universe. The Higgs Boson was the last undiscovered part of The Standard Model. The Higgs Boson is also attributed to being the cause of the Big Bang and thus the beginning of the universe, which is where the nickname ‘The God Particle’ originates from.
This discovery opened new questions for research. For example, scientists are studying the Higgs Boson and the Standard Model Predictions; if it deviates, it can provide clues to new particles that only interact with other Standard Model particles through the Higgs boson and thereby lead to new scientific discoveries. Also, there is a new theoretical model that proposes that there is not one, but five Higgs bosons. The most important ramification for future research, however, is that it can provide a unique portal to find signs of one of the biggest mysteries in physics - dark matter.
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