The Atom Smashers, a documentary film chronicling the efforts of Fermilab and its search for the Higgs boson is on PBS tonight, beginning at 10:30 PM central. It features some of Fermilab's celebrities, including Leon Lederman, Chris Quigg, and Rocky Kolb. Check it out. You may discover the Higgs hiding in your closet.
4 comments:
They probably will never find it. If they do find it they will never be able to get the mathematics to work to prove that it is the mediating particle for gravity.
Dear mmfiore,
Thank you for your comment. The Higgs boson physicists are searching for is not the same as the gluon, the particle that mediates the gravitational force. Unfortunately, we have no hopes of detecting the graviton at Fermilab due to its relative weakness compared to the other fundamental forces. It's ~40 orders of magnitude weaker than the force which binds quarks together!
Also, the theory that describes the Higgs boson (the Standard Model) has been well developed for over 40 years! We're just now reaching the energy level needed for a Higgs boson discovery at the particle accelerators (Fermilab and the LHC). That demonstrates the time necessary to construct and understand such large accelerator facilities.
Finally, whether or not the same Higgs boson that is described by the Standard Model is found at either Fermilab, or the LHC, we expect to find something interesting; maybe even new physics not described by the theory, which would be even more exciting! And that is worth investigating!
oops - graviton
Oops,
Thanks Augie Physics for the correction. The gluon is the strong force mediating particle. I meant to say the graviton, the force carrying particle of the gravitational force.
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