![]() But, as I describe in Knocking on Heaven's Door, the story of physics has to do with advancing in scales. Lisa Randall: We understand the Standard Model of particle physics that tells us about matter's most basic elements and interactions (as observed so far) extremely well. Randall's most recent book, Knocking on Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World, contains a chapter on the Higgs mechanism and boson, and several more on the application and potential of the Large Hadron Collider.ĪAAS MemberCentral had the opportunity to talk with Randall about the CERN results and the Higgs boson.ĪAASMC: Why is determining the existence (or lack thereof) of the Higgs Boson such an important question that it has attracted the professional efforts of thousands of scientists? She has received multiple awards and honorary degrees while pursuing the furthest boundaries of fundamental physics. ![]() Lisa Randall is the Baird Professor of Theoretical Physics at Harvard University. ![]() It is the last particle predicted by the SM that has still to be discovered experimentally. The quantum of the Higgs field is the Higgs boson. Why is finding the Higgs boson so important to the future of high energy physics? The Standard Model (SM) explains the existence of massive particles by the Higgs mechanism, in which a spontaneously broken symmetry associated with a scalar field (the Higgs field) results in the appearance of mass. Although these indications are at about the 2 sigma level of certainty (5 sigma levels are required to claim a discovery), the experimental results suggest that the existence and properties of the Higgs boson should be pinned down during 2012, if all goes well. Two recent experiments (ATLAS - A Toroidal Lhc ApparatuS, and CMS - Compact Muon Solenoid) have independently found indications that the Higgs boson may exist (with a mass of about 125 GeV/c 2, or roughly 133 times the mass of a hydrogen atom). ![]() The event shows characteristics expected from the decay of a Higgs boson but is also consistent with background Standard Model physics processes. Real CMS proton-proton collision events in which 4 high energy electrons (green lines and red towers) are observed. ![]()
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