Well hello everybody, I have been witnessing some renewed interest into our blog and I believe it's for the good. First of all, congrats to Shariq for UPSEE and to Paji for Canada. Now secondly, I'm here just to babble about life and science.

So, let's get started. I think you guys have all been listening and reading about the so-called "God particle" in the news these days and why should you not, Higgs Boson is the material of active research and more importantly it's existence will complete the Standard Model of Particle Physics or the theory of almost everything.

WHAT IS THE GOD-PARTICLE?
Now, most of us must be wondering as to what the God-Partice actually is. The God-Particle or technically "Higgs Boson" is a particle that is associated with the Higgs Field. So, in order to understand these bosons we need to know as to what the Higgs Field is. Higgs Field is theoretical and in theories it pervades the whole of the cosmos (outer space). The particles like Photons which make up the light are not affected by it and hence have no mass while others like electrons interact with this field and have mass given by the field. A Wikipedia definition of the Higgs Field is "The Higgs field, in a simple definition, is an hypothetical theory for existence of an ubiquitous quantum field that is responsible for giving elementary particle (like protons and neutrons) their masses." In other words the Higgs Field says that the matter is made up of mostly Higgs Bosons.

I have a subject called Physics I, where we deal with Statistic Mechanics and the various statistical aspects of matter. One of the theories of Statistical Mechanics is the Bose-Einstein Statistics whose particles are known as "Bosons". Hence, The God-Particle is also a boson. A boson, named and predicted by an Indian Physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, is a particle which by definition obeys the Bose-Einstein statistics, overrules the Pauli's exclusion principle, and carry energy instead of matter (unlike Fermions). Now, you guys must be like why are we discussing bosons rather than God-Particles, the reason is that out of the six elementary bosons, i.e, the four gauge bosons, the graviton, and the Higgs boson, only Higgs boson have not yet been detected. But, more importantly if we know the properties and behavior of bosons we can identify Higgs Bosons easily.
Higgs Boson is the heaviest of the particles and hence the name, God-Particle. It has mass in orders of billion electron volts! That's huge! And if the current findings are exact i.e, upto the order of 5 sigma accuracy, the mass of a Higgs Boson could be about 127 GeV. Keep in mind that 1GeV is equal to 1 billion electron volts.

A Higgs Boson is like a celebrity walking in space, it is always cluttered with the Higgs Field while the photon is some normal guy on the same street. The Higgs Bosons is the signature of the field, the celebrity. 

STANDARD MODEL

What is the Standard Model or the Theory of Everything? Well, actually it isn't the theory of everything as it does not incorporates the existence of the gaps within the universe known as "Dark Matter". But what this model does is that it satisfactorily explains the fundamental forces of the universe using 12 fundamental particle, and apparently Higgs was the only particle not yet discovered! So, Wuala, here we go. Now one can easily understand the nature of the time and space during the Big Bang. Basically, from my personal study(which, in fact, is very small) I think the Standard Model to Physics is like Evolution to Biology.

But we still have to determine a lot of things and particles, laws of time and space and many other things before one can propose a "Theory of Everything". 

HOW WAS HIGGS-BOSON DISCOVERED?

It was discovered after 40 years of its proposal by Peter Higgs. And is one the largest announcement in Physics since the discovery of the Quarks. I don't know what Quarks are since much studies were limited to Bosons. And I'll hopefully learn it in the future :D

The Higgs Bosons was discovered at Hadron Collider, the biggest particle accelerator or simply a very sophisticated Cyclotron. And it was done by smashing opposite proton beams and creating a 1 millionth second of the Big Bang. The Higgs were seen giving masses to the other particles.

A PIECE OF THE PUZZLE



According to Rolf Heuer, Director CERN
"The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe."

What does he mean by shedding light into the mysterious of the universe? Our universe is made up of huge amount mass, mass that is beyond imagination. And the observable mass like the Galaxies, the planets, the stars only account for about 4 percent! So, What is the rest 96 percent? As far as I can think, we don't know any thing about the rest 96 percent. It's just termed Dark Matter, but hopefully with the Higgs Boson we can determine it's nature and prove the laws of String Theory or Parallel Universe, time travel and other things.

What Einstein did to Newton's work was revolutionary and changed the course of Physics. Higgs Boson intends to do the same to Einstein's work.

You guys must be wondering how I know this shit. Well, it's because I studied some of it at college. It's almost everything I know from my studies and some past time Wikipedia-ing. But hopefully with Physics II and Physics III in the coming semesters, I'll be able to understand or at least grasp the Standard Model. 

Ps. Not everything written might be correct. For further study, become a physicist or better read up the whole of Wikipedia.