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Higgs boson
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This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses. (July 2012)
This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve this article to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. The talk page may contain suggestions. (July 2012)
Higgs boson
One possible signature of a Higgs boson from a simulated proton–proton collision. It decays almost immediately into two jets of hadrons and two electrons, visible as lines.
Composition
Elementary particle
Statistics
Bosonic
Status
Tentatively confirmed - a particle "consistent with" the Higgs boson has been formally discovered, but as of July 2012, scientists are being cautious as to whether it is formally identified as being the Higgs boson.
Symbol
H0
Theorized
R. Brout, F. Englert, P. Higgs, G. S. Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and T. W. B. Kibble (1964)
Discovered
ATLAS and CMS (2012)
Types
1 in the Standard Model;
5 or more in supersymmetric models
Mass
125.3±0.6 GeV/c2, ~126.5 GeV/c2
Electric charge
0
Spin
0
In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs boson is a hypothetical elementary particle. According to the standard model, the Higgs boson and the associated Higgs field explain the origin of the mass of those elementary particles that have mass. In this theory, a Higgs field fills all space, and the mass of all massive elementary particles is created from the energy of the interaction that particular particle with the Higgs field. In the standard model the Higgs field does not interact with all fundamental particles, but only some of them. Because all particles within atoms contribute to an atom's mass and some of these do not interact with the Higgs field, the Higgs interaction can account for only some (about 1%) of the mass of ordinary matter. However, since the Higgs field interaction has been regarded as the most simple of the mechanisms to explain the mass of fundamental particles, the particle responsible for the field has been the target of a long and expensive search in particle physics. The large hadron collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, which has been called the most complicated scientific instrument ever made, was designed with the primary purpose of finding and characterizing the Higgs boson. Because of its role in a fundamental property of elementary particles, the Higgs boson has been referred to as the God particle in popular culture, although this term is disliked by many scientists. The Higgs boson is named after British physicist Peter Higgs, who along with others, proposed the theoretical model that predicted such a particle in 1964. The Higgs boson was predicted to be very massive in particle terms (about as massive as medium-heavy atom of ordinary matter) and to have no spin and no charge. The Higgs boson was expected to be unstable, decaying almost immediately. It was expected to have properties quite diffferent from the Higgs field, which (as noted) permiates all space without change, and is not directly detectable except as it interacts with elementary particles. In July 2012, the CMS and the ATLAS experimental collaborations at the large hadron collider in CERN announced that they observed a new particle that is consistent with the Higgs boson.
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