Sleepysneezeydopeydoc-blog - Physics Nerd

“We are analog beings living in a digital world, facing a quantum future.” Neil Turok

Higgs Boson

On the 4th of July 2012, ATLAS and CMS experiments both reported a particle with a mass of around 126GeV at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The particle is consistent with the Higgs boson predicted by the standard model.

The Higgs boson creates a Higgs field which theoretically exists everywhere in the universe and interacts with subatomic fundamental particles like quarks and leptons to give them mass. How much mass a particle has depends on how much interaction is has with the field, all particles are equal before they enter the Higgs field, it is the Higgs field that gives the particles mass depending on their interactions with it.

In the Standard Model, the higgs field is a scalar tachyonic field ( “scalar” meaning that it doesn’t transform under Lorentz transformations and “tachyonic” referring to the field as a whole having imaginary, or complex, mass). While tachyons are purely theoretical particles that move faster than the speed of light, fields with imaginary mass have an important role in modern physics.

Scientists attached a video camera to Humboldt squid in order to observe how they use their color-changing skin cells in the wild.

Analysis of the footage revealed that the squid repeatedly flash red in the presence of other Humboldt squid, possibly as a way of communicating — though what, scientists aren’t yet sure. When close to the surface, the squids’ chromatophores flicker, giving their skin a hue of sunlight shining through the water column — possibly as a form of camouflage.

More: Science News

Reference: Rosen et al. 2015. Chromogenic behaviors of the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) studied in situ with an animal-borne video package

The five ingredients of a particle accelerator

Did you know there are over 30,000 particle accelerators in the world? The design of particle accelerators is a creative process. Often it starts with just one person and their concept, but they all tend to have 5 key ingredients.

1 - Particles - where do you get them, how do you make them? Accelerators might use atoms with electrons split off, called ions, or the particles inside atoms themselves: electrons or protons.

2 - Energy - you need an acceleration mechanism, some way of giving the particles a push. Typically this uses electric fields.

3 - Control - once your particles are moving, you need to control them, to move them and focus them where they’re needed. This is generally done with magnetic fields.

4 - Collision - not all particle accelerators are ‘colliders’ in the traditional sense. They don’t all collide beams together like at the LHC. But in almost every case you do need to collide your beam of accelerated particles into something - this might be a fixed target to investigate a sample, or even directly into a person’s body, such as during medical treatments.

5 - Detection - there’s normally not much point doing all of this work unless you can then detect the outcome and learn from it. You need to measure what happens to the beam of particles when they collide with their target.

Find out more in our animation about how to design a particle accelerator.

Carrying 69 Chevys…

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BeerBellyBlunt

Short version of the Higgs boson and Higgs field

The Higgs boson is the theoretical particle that gives rise to the mass of fundamental particles. It does this as a field that spans across the whole of the universe and you can think of it as someone trying to walk from one side of the room but they are up to their knees in water. The more drag the particle has in the field hence the slower it moves, the more mass it has. One thing to bear in mind is that this does not explain the mass created through quark confinement which is where most of our mass comes from.

The Higgs boson is predicted to have a mass of about 125GeV and would have a spin of 0 which is what makes it a boson.

Now, we know that mass and energy are interchangeable terms, photons have 0 mass and so one would expect then to have 0 energy, but E=had allows a photon to have energy but only when it is travelling at the speed of light.

Now this has been very brief and simple and not incredibly accurate, I hope this helps some of you understand the Higgs Boson.