![]() ![]() Other papers were published the same year and by the 80s the Higgs mechanisms were fully accepted by the physics community. In 1964, Higgs submitted a paper bringing forward this revolutionary concept to a physics journal which rejected it. Nobel Laureates press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. ![]() They found that if they assumed that all particles were massless, then all equations were working well and they were able to describe in a unified way both the electromagnetic and the weak interaction. The weak interaction is the interaction responsible for nuclear fission and the hydrogen cycle in the sun that allows life on our planet. In the 1960s, the theoretical physicists who developed what is called the Standard Model of particle physics encountered a puzzle trying to describe what is called the weak interaction. Both these theories are needed to describe the elementary particle physics since elementary particles are tiny (in fact we treat them as point-like) and they travel almost at the speed of light. To describe the behavior of elementary particles, physicists use Quantum Field Theory which is a theoretical framework that is based both on relativity and quantum mechanics. But where do the masses of these fundamental particles come from? The theoretical work to answer this question, that appears simple, has led to the Higgs boson. At a microscopic level, the mass of an object, like an apple, comes from its constituent molecules and atoms, which are themselves built from fundamental particles, electrons and quarks. We know from elementary physics that the mass of an object is the resistance it offers to have its motion changed as described by Newton’s law F=ma. The Higgs boson is a particle that was hypothesized in 1964 by Peter Higgs and other theoretical physicists who were trying to understand the origin of the mass of fundamental particles. ![]()
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