Higgs hypothesis gathers mass

Scientists say the discovered particle is consistent with the sought-after Higgs boson

Published on:

13 Jul 2012, 3:45 am

THE very mention of the God particle irks Sean Carroll. “Nobody really calls it the God particle,” snaps the Caltech physicist, one of the world’s most renowned. “It’s the Higgs boson.”

But most academics accept that it is because of the subatomic particle’s catchier nickname that the world waited with bated breath on the final word on its existence. Scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) did not disappoint either. In a conference on July 4, they announced that they have detected a new particle having properties consistent with the long sought-after Higgs boson. The elusive particle is believed to help all matter in the universe acquire mass (see ‘Particle physics basics’).

The finding has been more rewarding for India. Not only did it bring Satyendra Nath Bose, the man who defined the properties of bosons (see ‘The unsung hero?’), to limelight, it also made CERN scientists rethink the country’s membership in the organisation. There are talks of making India an associate member of CERN from a non-member “observer” country. “Observer” countries can take part in meetings but not in decision-making.

Indian touch

The experiments at CERN to discover Universe’s secrets started in 1954. India joined the league in 1992. The experiments on the Higgs boson began only in 2010.

The finding has been aided by researchers from Delhi University, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Panjab University, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai and Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) in Kolkata.

“India has contributed in two major ways—providing instrumentation and human resource for data analysis,” says Naba K Mondal, professor at the department of high energy physics at TIFR.

Six experiments are being carried out at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-km long and 100m deep tunnel along the French-Swiss border, where scientists are trying to simulate conditions just after the Bing Bang. India has contributed in two of these experiments—Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE). CMS is a general-purpose experiment studying subatomic particles, including the Higgs boson. Two components of the CMS experiment have been built by India. ALICE is for studying how states of matter have evolved over time. Theorists from India are constantly looking at the data generated, making sense of it and publishing papers to advance knowledge in the field. The other experiment which is studying the Higgs boson is A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS).

The unsung hero?

While the Higgs part of the God particle is known, boson goes unnoticed. It has been named after Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose who described its properties in 1925. Bose’s genius impressed Albert Einstein and he shared with the Indian the credit for an entire set of statistics on quantum mechanics. While there was a wave of sympathy for Bose when the Higgs finding was announced, people do not realise he had nothing to do with the particle. It was Peter Higgs’ work. However, Indian physicists think Bose deserved a Nobel prize for his work on the Bose-Einstein statistics. Sukalyan Chattopadhyay, an Indian scientist, says, “Like any other prize, Nobel requires a lot of lobbying. Bose was happy with his ordinary life.” He adds, “Bose has redeemed himself. Everytime a particle with an integral spin—a characteristic of the particle—is discovered, it will be called a boson.”

What’s the ‘God’ particle?

The experiment

Higgs boson’s offshoots

India