Higgs boson

The Higgs boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. It is the quantum excitation of the Higgs field—a fundamental field of crucial importance to particle physics theory, first suspected to exist in the 1960s, that unlike other known fields such as the electromagnetic field, takes a non-zero constant value almost everywhere. The question of the Higgs field's existence has been the last unverified part of the Standard Model of particle physics and, according to some, "the central problem in particle physics".

The presence of this field, now believed to be confirmed, explains why some fundamental particles have mass when, based on the symmetries controlling their interactions, they should be massless. The existence of the Higgs field would also resolve several other long-standing puzzles, such as the reason for the weak force's extremely short range.

Boson

In quantum mechanics, a boson (/ˈboʊsɒn/,/ˈboʊzɒn/) is a particle that follows Bose–Einstein statistics. Bosons make up one of the two classes of particles, the other being fermions. The name boson was coined by Paul Dirac to commemorate the contribution of the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose in developing, with Einstein, Bose–Einstein statistics—which theorizes the characteristics of elementary particles. Examples of bosons include fundamental particles such as photons, gluons, and W and Z bosons (the four force-carrying gauge bosons of the Standard Model), the recently discovered Higgs boson, and the still-theoretical graviton of quantum gravity; composite particles (e.g. mesons and stable nuclei of even mass number such as deuterium (with one proton and one neutron, mass number = 2), helium-4, or lead-208); and some quasiparticles (e.g. Cooper pairs, plasmons, and phonons).

An important characteristic of bosons is that their statistics do not restrict the number of them that occupy the same quantum state. This property is exemplified by helium-4 when it is cooled to become a superfluid. Unlike bosons, two identical fermions cannot occupy the same quantum space. Whereas the elementary particles that make up matter (i.e. leptons and quarks) are fermions, the elementary bosons are force carriers that function as the 'glue' holding matter together. This property holds for all particles with integer spin (s = 0, 1, 2 etc.) as a consequence of the spin–statistics theorem. When a gas of Bose particles is cooled down to temperatures very close to absolute zero then the kinetic energy of the particles decreases to a negligible amount and they condense into a lowest energy level state. This state is called Bose-Einstein condensation. It is believed that this property is the explanation of superfluidity.

Higgs

Higgs may refer to:

Physics

People

Gaming computer

A gaming computer (also gaming rig and sometimes called a gaming PC) is a personal computer designed for playing computationally demanding video games. Gaming computers are very similar to conventional PCs, with the main difference being the addition of gaming-oriented components such as one or more high-end video cards. Gaming computers are often associated with enthusiast computing due to an overlap in interests. However, while a gaming PC is built to achieve performance for actual gameplay, enthusiast PCs are built to maximize performance, using games as a benchmark. The difference between the two carries a large discrepancy in the cost of the system. Whereas enthusiast PCs are high-end by definition, gaming PCs can be subdivided into low-end, mid-range, and high-end segments. Contrary to the popular misconception that PC gaming is inextricably tied to high-priced enthusiast computing, video card manufacturers earn the bulk of their revenue from their low-end and mid-range offerings.

Don Lincoln

Don Lincoln (born 1964) is an American particle physics researcher at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame. He received a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from Rice University in 1994. In 1995, he was a codiscoverer of the top quark. He has coauthored hundreds of research papers and, more recently, was a member of the team finding evidence for the Higgs boson.

Lincoln is a public speaker and science writer and has contributed many science articles in magazines that include Analog Science Fiction and Fact in July 2009, Scientific American in November 2012 and July 2015, and The Physics Teacher at least six times. He is also the author of books describing particle physics written for the public. They are "Understanding the Universe: From Quarks to the Cosmos (Revised edition)" (2012) and "The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider" (2009) and "The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Things That Will Blow Your Mind" (2014). In 2013, he released a book called "Alien Universe: Extraterrestrials in our Minds and in the Cosmos," which explains how the common images of extraterrestrials came to enter Western culture and then goes on to explore what modern physics, chemistry and biology can tell us about what real intelligent alien life might be like. He been involved in a number of videos dedicated to dessiminating discoveries in particle physics and since July 7, 2011 has been a keynote speaker for a series produced by Fermilab that explores the range of issues dominating particle physics today in an accessible and sometime humorous way. Among the topics included in the series are the Higgs Boson, Anti-matter, the nature of Neutrinos, the concepts of the Big Bang, Cosmic Inflation, the Multiverse and Supersymmetry.