Why the Higgs Particle Matters. Matt Strassler, July 2, 2012 [Updated slightly, to reflect the fact that a Higgs of some type has been discovered, as announced at the LHC on July 4th, 2012.] Most of us learned in school, or from books, that all the materials around us — everything we eat, drink and breathe, all living creatures, and the very earth itself — are made from atoms. These come in about 100 types, called “the chemical elements”, and are typically found arranged into molecules, as letters can be arranged into words. Such facts about the world we take almost for granted, but they were still hotly debated late into the 19th century. But even today, some lines in this picture are still fuzzy. We learned in school that the mass of an atom comes mostly from its tiny nucleus; the electrons that form a broad cloud around the nucleus contribute less than a thousandth of an atom’s mass.
The mass of the electron, and its origin, has puzzled and troubled physicists since it was first measured. How is it done? Like this: The Higgs Boson Explained. Bertrand Russell’s ABC of Relativity: The Classic Introduction to Einstein (Free Audio) The Particle Adventure. Michio Kaku | Professor of Theoretical Physics, CUNY. Quantum Diaries. Aidan Randle-Conde | Université Libre de Bruxelles | Belgium View Blog | Read Bio CERN Higgs seminar liveblog! Follow the liveblog here! On Tuesday December 13th, there will be a seminar at CERN about the search for the Higgs boson using the 2011 dataset. Physicists at ATLAS and CMS have been working very hard all year (and are still working) to show the results for 5fb-1 each. Watch the video on youtube! Since this an important milestone in the search for the Higgs boson, I will be liveblogging the event, from the main auditorium here at CERN.
If you want to know more about the Higgs boson I’d recommend you look at Flip’s recent post. Check out the link to the Seminar page.