Introduction: It tells the story of the discovery of the Higgs boson, starting from Peter Higgs predicting the existence of the Higgs boson in 1964, to the establishment of the CERN high-energy particle collider, to the later discovery of the Higgs boson, 3,000 scientists from all over the world participated in the experiment, filling physics with a missing piece of debris.
One theory of the objective existence of matter is the Standard Model of particle physics as we know it, which explains the interaction of elementary particles (17 elementary particles to be precise) in nature with fundamental forces. In the 1970s, this concept summed up the material composition known at the time.
It wasn't until the 1960s that 16 elementary particles were discovered, but something was wrong. Then, in 1964, the British physicist Peter Higgs published a paper predicting the existence of new particles that would give all other particles mass so that matter could exist. At the same time, other physicists around the world have also given a very similar particle.
The Higgs boson is known as the "God particle, and the whole world is looking for it. If this particle does exist, it will be the last missing part of the Standard Model. It was never discovered because no particle accelerator could provide enough data to confirm it. But half a century after it was first speculated about, the mystery was finally revealed.
On July 4, 2012, scientists announced the discovery of The Higgs bosons in the Large Hadron Collider. The collider is located at the European Organization for Nuclear Energy Research (CERN).
The Standard Model has been built
Dream Chasing - In December 1994, the construction of the Large Hadron Collider was a green light, costing nearly 10 billion knives, making it the most expensive scientific instrument to date.
The collider is the world's largest and most energetic particle accelerator, with a superconductor circumference of 27 kilometers (17 miles). It is located in a tunnel 100 meters underground at CERN – about a football pitch wide, spanning France and Switzerland, near Geneva.
Inside the accelerator, two beams of high-energy particles travel back and forth at nearly the speed of light until they shatter each other. At nearly -271.3 degrees Celsius, constrained by the strong magnetic field formed by this superconductor that is colder than outer space, these particle beams collide at four locations in the inner ring of the accelerator, corresponding to the positions of the four particle detectors: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb.
This did not start well, and the collider was originally scheduled to start around 2005, but it was postponed until September 2008. Then, just a week after going live, a circuit error damaged a magnet, causing the operation to stall for another year and a half.
"The ATLAS Empire doesn't need night because no one is sleepy here"
Once launched, research into the Higgs boson, the crown jewel described by Michael Tarters, began. Tarters is a professor of physics at Columbia University and a member of the ATLAS experiment, managing the physicists assigned to the project in the United States.
Even if the physicists don't discover the particle, their efforts are contributions to the field — an institution that hasn't failed, Tatus said, "and even if you don't find it, it might be pretty good," Tates told Inverse, because it could lead to a new theory.
This team – two teams at CERN – ATLAS and CMS.
Experiment – The two groups have their own competitions. Like brothers and sisters, encourage each other to compete with each other.
The two teams are like an army, made up of nearly 3,000 physicists from more than a dozen different countries.
How to maintain contact between them – researchers are gathered from nearly 60 countries, such a large distribution, there are advantages and disadvantages.
"This is a bit like an English maxim that the British Empire can't see the setting sun. The ATLAS Empire also didn't set a sun, because there were always a few people awake somewhere in the world. Tarters said. It's an unexpected perk — it means someone can work on the system all the time, he explains.
People from different parts of the world "create a fairly powerful synergy," he says, "allowing you to see things from different perspectives and bring something new to analytic research." "To maintain normal liaison with the fellows, there were several collaborative meetings at CERN. They also use email, phone calls, and a variety of other video conferencing on a daily basis. But Tarters insists there is no substitute for this classic chiller session.
Michael Tarters, one of the members of the ATLAS experiment, CERN.
Why collaboration is so important to this task – particle physics has had a collaborative spirit from the start. Tutus explains that the basic reason for this is, "It's purely because it's not something that can be done by building facilities at local institutions or having an accelerator in your backyard." "So I think there's broad international collaboration, which is a property that's deeply embedded in the physical DNA of particles."
Although life is upside down, it is science that makes researchers work harmoniously. Physicists may have a bit of a "queen temperament," he joked. "But it ultimately works because we end up with a common goal and want to fight for and achieve it together."
"Without solidarity, there would be no Higgs particles"
"You can get people from different cultures, different sects, different ideas to work together. But for some reason, they can come together in management and focus on what they want to do: science. ”
Two different teams, with common goals, but can form a healthy competition, Tarters said, "if two experiments have the same phenomenon, then you have great confidence that this is the truth." ”
This group cultivated at CERN has become a research project for anthropologists and sociologists. It's incredible that so many physicists are trying to work and collaborate because of a common cause!
So, did they succeed? On July 4, 2021, the ATLAS and CMS experiments together announced that they had discovered a new particle with a mass of 125 GeV electron volts— most likely the Higgs boson.
In a speech at CERN, Higgs described the discovery as "an incredible thing that happened in my lifetime." He also wiped tears of excitement as he promoted the news. To prevent people from camping inside, the CERN Auditorium was closed for three days.
At the time of the disclosure, Tarters was in New York. The news was officially announced at 9 a.m. Swiss time – 3 a.m. Western Time. Despite this, he planned to organize a party and tell the people in the city about the happy event. "But I've had two kinds of answers, one is, July 4, 3 a.m. — you're crazy enough. The other is – good news! ”
From grandfathers to children, about a hundred people, all gathered happily. He described the milestone as a "moment of excitement."
At CERN, the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics Announcement Moment (CERN)
The following year, on August 8, 2013, higgs shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Belgian physicist Francisco Angler for a joint study of higgs boson theory.
What's next – discovering the Higgs boson is an incredible feat, but that's not the end of it. There's still a lot of work here for physics parents to put in. Now is not the time to close the book of the Standard Model, but the discovery of the Higgs boson opens up new paths in physics.
The big question now is whether the particles scientists find are indeed the Higgs boson, as described in the Standard Model, or something different and more complex.
But, in any case, the landmark achievement of discovering this particle is unquestionably the result of painstaking collaboration. "The most important thing," Tarters said, "wouldn't be where today's discoveries would be made without collaboration." ”
BY: inverse
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