Higgs Boson, Four Fundamental Forces, and Virtual Particles

    Since my last post the world of particle physics has had another monumental step forward. The same scientist at Italy's CERN particle accelerator who discovered neutrinos traveling faster then the speed of light, have had a strong wiff of the elusive Higgs Boson. But what in gods name is a Higgs Boson? For this I will have to explain the current model of particle physics. Take in mind that Im only scratching the surface of particle physics. Im only describing it in a way were you, the reader, can easily visualize it and understand it to a certain degree. The ideas Im about to explain are still being researched on and have math with high ineffability. I will try and give some simple analogies but they don't in anyway interpret the onerous math behind it. Everything Im about to explain is as always, a theory. One day we might disprove it, but thats science. When the data doesn't fit the fact, change the fact.


In order to discuss the Hoggs Boson you must first know the Standard Model of Particle Physics. It is theorized today that the whole universe is under the rule of the four forces (Electromagnetism, Gravity, Weak Force, and the Strong Force).

 Electromagnetism is the force of electric charge. Like charges repel and opposites attract. The particles that have an electric charge are the proton, the electron, and the quarks. The first two particles also have their anti-matter brothers, the positron (electron with a positive charge) and the anti-proton (proton with a negative charge). These particles, along with the neutral neutron, make up all the atoms across the universe. They are the reason why you don't fall right through the ground. In theory, an atom's electrical activity with other atoms keeps you from falling through the ground. Now you might be asking yourself, but I thought stable atoms where neutral? And they are, but that still doesn't mean that the electric charges are just confined to the particles in the atom they are in, they also affect other atom's particles and vice versa. Electromagnetism is also associated with light, magnetism, friction, gamma rays, radio waves, and countless other things. But to prevent time consumption, I will stop elaborating on electromagnetism.

Gravity is the force that many probably think they know the best, which is a misconception. Gravity is easily explained as the attraction between things because they have mass. According to Albert Einstein, he showed that gravity is caused by mass curving space-time. Gravity is the weakest force out of all the forces. When compared to electromagnetism, electromagnetism is generally 4*10^42 times bigger!!! Compare it the strong force and you get an even bigger difference in the two forces's magnitudes. Gravity only seems bigger because of the colossal size of celestial bodies (i.e. things like stars, planets, meteors, comets ect...) in the universe. Think about this, it only takes a small amount of charge to overcome the Earth's gravitational pull.

The weak force is the force of decaying particles. It makes massive quarks and leptons decay into smaller ones. Quarks are the particles that make protons and neutrons, there are six in total. Apart from quarks, there are other particles that make up matter. These other particles are called Leptons. Leptons are other matter particles, particles like the electron and its heavier cousins the Muon and Tau. Apart from those particles there are three other types of lepton neutrinos. Each corresponding to the other three leptons (Example: A muon neutrino). An example of a decay is a Muon decays into a less massive Tau and a Muon neutrino/s. Electrons are the least massive lepton, therefore they are seen the most in nature.

The Strong force has to do with the attraction between quarks. Quarks not only have fractional electric charges, they also have another type of charge called Color charge. This color charge is immense for it keeps the nucleus of an atom tightly crowded together even though protons repel each other for having like charges. Quarks are never found by themselves, they are always found in groups of quarks, or in other words hadrons. Hadrons are always color charge neutral, but just like in electromagnetism where neutral atoms still affect other atoms because of their particles electric charge. Hadrons do the same with each other but instead of protons and electrons, they use quarks, and instead of using electric charge, they use color charge (which is a lot stronger).

In order for each force to be a real, a field and a force carrier particle are needed. A field is something that permeates space. Its effects are only confined to that space. In order for every force to create a field, they need a force carrier particle to create that force, thats where bosons come in. Bosons are small bundles of energy (quanta) that create a force field. The electromagnetic boson is the mass-less photon which travels at the speed of light. For gravity the theorized boson is the graviton. It hasn't been proven yet, but it is an important puzzle piece which is being researched on and worked on in string theory/M-theory (theories which try to connect the four forces and try to explain the whole universe). The weakforce has three bosons. The W boson (+ or -), and Z boson. The strong force (color force) has 8 bosons, the gluons. 

Bosons are absorbed and exchanged between their respective particles to produce a field and in turn, produce the force its meant to produce. Bosons can be either real or virtual.  Bosons are real when given enough energy, Bosons are a result of particle decay. A particle will decay and produce a boson and another particle/s (most likely another quark). In this process however the decay might produce a boson that is more massive then the initial quark. This is because the initial mass and the kinetic energy of the decay cause the formation of a more massive particle (a boson). This is luckily solved by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. A boson can exist after decay only if it lives for a small amount of time, then it decays into other particles. This type of situation produces a virtual particle, which is a particle that is present for such a small amount of time that its presence goes undetected. The virtual particle's affects can be felt because they make a force field, but the virtual particle's presence itself is undetectable because of its small life-span. Its important to note that virtual bosons are what make a force fields, not real bosons.



Now that we know all of that, we can finally get into the Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson is as its names suggests, a boson. The field it produces when its in a virtual state is the Higgs Feild. The field is what gives particles mass. The more you interact with it, the more mass you have. Since the photon has no mass, we can say it doesn't interact with the Higgs Field at all. The top quark on the other hand has a relatively large mass, we can say it interacts with the Higgs Field a lot. Now recently the scientist at CERN had arranged a conference about their data that gave them a hint of what the real Higgs Boson's mass might be. Bosons are suppose to be mass-less in theory, surprisingly thats not how they work in reality thanks to the the Higgs field. 


I know this has been a lot of reading and your head might hurting a little, but luckily I have some videos for those who are more interested in this topic, or just want to clarify the topic better. Below me will be some links to further explain this blog entry. I recommend watching the first video at least. It explains stuff fairly well and provides some nice visual aid.


Video one : 

Video two:

Article 1: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec16.html

Website 1: A very very helpful website on particle physics.
http://particleadventure.org/eternal-questions.html

As always, thank you for reading and I hope you learned something interesting today :)