Gig’s with Higgs

Disclaimer: this is just a small attempt to rekindle the imagination in each of us to look at science with a new perspective and to trigger a wider forum for discussion and perhaps trigger a request for a category under the name of 'Science' which is missing as of now.

Some time back the Large Hadron Collideror LHC a giant atom smasher developed by CERN in Geneva caught the imagination of the common man. Sadly science very rarely invokes the kind of mass curiosity when compared to the memes of statues that drink milk or the long drawn pursuit of the Holy Grail. But this one was an exception. All of the world sat up and took notice. But for the Mango Man (that’s you and me) this still is largely a big expensive experiment. The LHC is going to recreate a miniature of what happened, ‘After the Big Bang’ (ATB). The Big Bang is when the universe as we know came to be. Scientist at CERN hope to find the ‘God particle’ or Higgs particle. It’s a particle named after the person who discovered it (hypothesised it Bingo! So much for my ‘eureka’ moment)! Higgs particle has a lot more to it then the name. And because it is something that has never yet been seen or observed it is deemed as the ‘God Particle’.


Let’s look at an everyday example to understand this. When you cool gaseous steam; at first it appears to remain unchanged. Bring down the temperature little more and suddenly when we reach 100 degree Celsius it condenses to form water. You continue to cool it and at 0 degree Celsius water becomes ice (yawn… we all know that). That is obvious however the under lying molecules in all the three i.e. Ice, water and steam are the same they transit from gas to liquid and then to solid. This change is known as ‘Phase transition’ (remember school days??). More importantly the symmetry of the molecule increases either from Ice to steam or vise versa. But what has this got to do with our big bang and LHC ?

Well in the late 70’s physicists realized that not only can objects undergo phase transition but the cosmos as a whole undergoes a phase transition as well. Though the phase transition in the cosmos was not literally like steam to ice. The ‘substance’ that did condense in the cosmos as the temperatures cooled in the millions of years after the Big Bang is a ‘field’ more precisely a Higgs field. This field is ‘universal’ (i.e. found everywhere). In the initial scorching high temperatures just after the Big Bang the Higgs field jumped up and down but when temperatures dropped significantly in the universe the Higgs field condensed to a non-zero value.

Now to our God particle or Higgs particle just as electromagnetic fields consist of photons the Higgs field consists of the Higgs particles. But why don’t we feel this Higgs field? If it’s universal then shouldn’t we feel it? Of course we should and we do, we all feel our muscles at work when we swing our arm at the Bowling alley the heavier the ball greater the force to be exerted. In other words the mass represents the resistance an object has to change in its motion or acceleration (remember Newton I know the Apple was never the same again). The obvious question then is why objects resist acceleration? This resistance causes the object to acquire its ‘mass’- its inertia that fights acceleration. With the Higgs field we have an answer to that question why do we have mass?

When you swing your arm you swing the atoms that make your arm. Now hold on I know you are thinking this is getting a little too ‘physical’ for comfort but run with me this one time! An Atom constituents of proton, neutron and electrons each of which in turn are made up of smaller particles lets call them quarks. So when you swing your arm you are actually swinging the quarks back and forth. The Higgs field (remember it is everywhere) interacts with the quarks and electrons of the arm and resist the acceleration much like a storage of molasses resists the motion of a ping-pong ball that’s been submerged in it. And this resistance or drag contributes to what you perceive as the mass of your arm and that of the bowling ball that you swing. So now you know where you get your mass from it is thanks to the Higgs field.

Theoretical calculations have shown if there is a universal Higgs field in all of space Higgs particle should also be there. The High energy collisions that will take place in the LHC is out to get just that particle from the debris of the bang between two photos head at speeds that are beyond anything you know. The scientists are hoping to find the elusive hypothetical Higgs particle in the LHC. If nothing like that is found we might have to rewrite a lot of science as we know it and even a relook at the evolution of the universe as we understand today. So next time you think your body mass ratio is not right go-ahead blame it on the Damned Higgs field and the Higgs particle. Toss away that diet plan and eat away to glory it’s now your fault that you have mass it’s your gig’s with Higgs that caused it!! And oh yes next time you read that news on the God particle remember its got to do with and the eternal question ‘am I looking fat?’