Post by Mr. Jon Donnis on Jul 5, 2012 14:04:23 GMT
I dont really understand this Higgs Boson thing, but here is something I found on blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100169196/can-you-explain-the-higgs-boson-in-140-characters-or-fewer/
First things first: the "Higgs boson" is a distraction. The easiest thing to think of is the "Higgs field". Like light has light waves and also light particles (photons). They were looking for the boson, the particle, because that's what they'd be able to spot. But the easiest way for you to think of it is as a field, like a magnetic field.
An analogy might be with planes and air. Big heavy planes move slowly through the air, because they're not very streamlined. Little fighter jets move more easily, because they are streamlined. But if they were in space, it wouldn't matter how streamlined they were: in a vacuum, the streamlining is irrelevant.
The Higgs field (in a very vaguely analogous way) does the same with matter. Before the Higgs field formed (about a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang), all particles flew around at the speed of light, because they had nothing to slow them down, like planes in vacuum. But once it formed, the heavy particles suddenly found they were flying through a treacly field, and had to slow down, like planes in air. Others – the photon – had no mass, and so carried on flying around at the same speed. The reason that heavy things are harder to push than light things is because they are less "streamlined" in this Higgs field than lighter things.
The Higgs particle, in this analogy, is like an oxygen or nitrogen molecule in the air: it's the particle that creates the air, but we can think of the air as a fluid.
First things first: the "Higgs boson" is a distraction. The easiest thing to think of is the "Higgs field". Like light has light waves and also light particles (photons). They were looking for the boson, the particle, because that's what they'd be able to spot. But the easiest way for you to think of it is as a field, like a magnetic field.
An analogy might be with planes and air. Big heavy planes move slowly through the air, because they're not very streamlined. Little fighter jets move more easily, because they are streamlined. But if they were in space, it wouldn't matter how streamlined they were: in a vacuum, the streamlining is irrelevant.
The Higgs field (in a very vaguely analogous way) does the same with matter. Before the Higgs field formed (about a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang), all particles flew around at the speed of light, because they had nothing to slow them down, like planes in vacuum. But once it formed, the heavy particles suddenly found they were flying through a treacly field, and had to slow down, like planes in air. Others – the photon – had no mass, and so carried on flying around at the same speed. The reason that heavy things are harder to push than light things is because they are less "streamlined" in this Higgs field than lighter things.
The Higgs particle, in this analogy, is like an oxygen or nitrogen molecule in the air: it's the particle that creates the air, but we can think of the air as a fluid.
