Talk:Higgs boson

‹See TfM›

Higgs boson nominated for good article

Restored from archive 2 on 5 July 2012, in case anyone wants to re-list for GA or to look up the GA outstanding issues (high profile article, GA is referenced on mainspace page)

Now the article is easily understandable and fairly comprehensive and balanced (I think), can we get it to GA?

1. Probably needs review by someone expert on the subject for technical accuracy
2. Review for cite quality and all facts cited
3. Anything else?
4. Let's push for this quality level!

GA criteria are here.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 09:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to have a non-physicist read the lead section and tell us how much they actually understand of it. All in all, I agree that the article is GA level or very close to it. ― A. di M.​  11:56, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Two possible edits now you draw attention to that section -

• Duplicated text (...is a hypothetical massive elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Its existence is predicted by the Standard Model to explain how...)
• Possibly add a para break before the sentence "Alternative sources of the Higgs mechanism...", which otherwise gets lost or looks awkward, and might make the 1st paragraph a bit too dense?

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

A proposed edit in the introductory section: The following sentence suggests that physicists' understanding of what is and isn't excluded is subjective and ill-defined, whereas in fact what physicists mean by confidence level for exclusion has a precise objective definition: "It is also believed that the original range under investigation has been narrowed down considerably and that a mass outside approximately 115–130 GeV/c2 is very likely to be ruled out". I would suggest: "The original mass range under investigation has been narrowed down considerably and masses outside the range 115–130 GeV/c2 have been ruled out by both experiments with 95% certainty".Dave4478 (talk) 19:51, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Technical points needing physicist review before GA

1. Q: This edit. Is it best to say that the Higgs boson would "confirm" or just "further validate" the SM as essentially correct? My concern here is that SM includes the Higgs field/boson and the latter is considered an integral part, it's not "Standard Model + Higgs field". (Though that part can be removed and replaced if HB doesn't exist). So if HB doesn't exist, most of SM would be correct - but SM would in fact be disproven as a model, since it includes the field and boson and that part would be incorrect. So the importance of the boson is that it essentially proves the SM is correct. Comments? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

   A: I agree that the SM includes the Higgs boson (i.e., without Higgs it's not SM). However, consider that the LHC might also find that the rates of production and decay of the Higgs boson are different from those predicted by the SM (for a given mass of the boson). In that case, the discovery of a non-standard Higgs would disprove the SM. I would leave 'further validate', although I don't feel very strongly about it. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

   Either way the importance is that if a standard HB is found it further confirms the SM, but if it's not found, or a non-standard HB is found, it actually disproves the SM. What's at stake either way is confirming or disproving SM, not merely "further validating" it. That's presumably a big part of why it's so important. We get to find out if SM is essentially correct at heart, or if it's disproven (in favor of some other model).

   In lay terms, the "intention" behind LHC and the HB search is that we get data that lets us identify which of many currently plausible models and approaches are plausible and which can now be ruled out, and we get evidence to allow a choice between fundamental theories. That's essential for theorists who have not got the kind of data needed to advance or select between theories beyond a certain point. I think it's worth making clear that its deeper importance stems from that point. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:26, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

2. Q: The "timeline" section listing results as announced step-by-step is possibly not entirely complete. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:26, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

   A:

P.S. I think we should remove from the "Experimental search" sections the sentences about the indirect bounds on the Higgs mass from electroweak precision observables. Strictly speaking, those are not experimental searches for the Higgs boson, and the numbers quoted are not even up-to-date. The up-to-date bounds (including the latest, post-2009 measurements of the top and W masses - see here) could be added to the relevant paragraph in the "Higgs boson" section. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:08, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

They're certainly experimental results as they derive from "measurements". But you're right, that's not the right place for long details of outdated measurements from 2006-09. Maybe we can do what we did with detailed LHC results - move specific (outdated) findings into their place in the "timeline" section, and condense the paragraph under "Experimental search" to summarize the progress of indirect measured bounds to date. This raises a second question - the timeline is probably incomplete? (Added as Q2 above). FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:26, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, the measurements of the electroweak precision observables (W and top mass, Weinberg angle and so on) are experimental results, but they cannot be considered searches for the Higgs boson. The fit on the EW observables that provides bounds on the Higgs mass is a theoretical interpretation of those measurements (indeed, it assumes that the SM is valid, and that there is no new physics beyond the SM). I think that the section "Experimental search" (as well as the "timeline" subsection) should rather focus on the direct searches for the Higgs boson. As I wrote above, the indirect bounds can be quoted in the previous section (where they are already mentioned anyway). Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:09, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I can go along with your key point ("but they cannot be considered searches for the Higgs boson...no new physics beyond the SM"), so probably I agree with you enough to deal with this, but I need to think on it a bit. Also a major legal case that changed legal history, society, and police culture just ended in England, its article was a mess, the article on the government report doesn't even exist, and I love love love the occasional high profile law article (one GA was last year's Supreme Court case Berghuis v. Thompkins), so I'm just getting that one in shape too! But haven't forgotten this one :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

The statement that the Standard Model is valid for a Higgs mass above 115 GeV is incorrect. The actual critical mass is more like ~129 GeV and includes the (possibly) observed mass of about 126 GeV within 2 standard deviations. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.6497v1.pdf I know media sources are preferred to technical literature, but I'm not sure where you'd find reliable numbers outside the journals... Law of Entropy (talk) 17:07, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Higgs boson/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: StringTheory11 (talk · contribs) 20:00, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

This article appears to cover an incredibly important subject, so it may take me a while to review the whole thing. I will go section by section.

I have placed the article on hold until the problems are dealt with. StringTheory¹¹ 20:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry, but the lack of refs means that I have to fail this article.... StringTheory¹¹ 01:36, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Having been busy on SOPA and other matters, would you be willing to "unfail it" but put it on hold for more than the usual GA week? I should be able to get back to it once SOPA is over, in maybe a week. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:06, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   We seem to have, well not a problem per se, but something with the first image. It appears it is fine for now, although it appears that this could change at a later date.

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Theoretical origins and background

• I recommend that you split this into two sections: history and (predicted) properties. More detailed info for subsections available below.

I retitled these, but overall I'm still happy to have them in one section. In this article and at this time, the particle itself is still theoretical, the alternatives are theoretical, the background is a discussion of how theory evolved..... the 3 sections read well as a whole. Once a definitive answer is available then a distinction of fact v. previous theory makes a change to sections sensible, and much of the "theoretical properties" or "alternatives" will be consigned to history too (and best shown in a "historical" section). For now as we don't know and it's all the story of theory, it really does seems to be better in one section as it is. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Origins of the theory

• First image should say who is not pictured.

Images of authors now side by side with caption covering both. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:47, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

• First para does not have any refs. It should have at least one ref, preferably more.
• Last sentence in 3rd para needs a ref.
• Quotation in 4th para needs a ref.
• Why is the "a" in the last paragraph italic? Please make it normal text.

Fixed. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

• Last sentence in 5th para needs a ref.

StringTheory¹¹ 19:17, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

The Higgs boson

• The whole section only has two refs, both in the same para. This thing needs WAY more references before it can become a GA
• The section name should not be the same as the article.

Fixed. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

• Try not to have multiple links next to each other; try to rewrite to spread them out.
• Since it is its own antiparticle, it has zero net charge, which should probably be stated.

Added but needs disambiguation. In this context does this signify electric charge, color charge, magnetic charge, or all of these? We have articles on all 3. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 18:41, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Clarified that electric charge is meant -- as in the diagram, no interaction between photon (the mediator of the electromagnetic force for electrically charged particles) and Higgs. Colour charge, as stated in the relevant article, is a property of quarks and gluons (only) and serves to determine the strong force between hadrons, for example. Magnetic charge redirects to Magnetic monopole and is clearly not relevant to the standard model which does not mention them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Puzl bustr (talk • contribs) 21:30, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The reference to the Higgs being its own antiparticle also implicates electric charge -- antiparticles having equal mass to the original particle but opposite sign of electric charge. Of course, having charge zero you could say it has none of any kind of charge you like but it makes sense to respect the way the physicists use terminology and be consistent with Standard Model. Puzl bustr (talk) 13:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• "Many theorists expect new physics beyond the Standard Model to emerge at the TeV-scale, based on unsatisfactory properties of the Standard Model." Any specific names to mention here?

The statement existed in the article historically, was unsourced, needs researching and specifying (what theorists? what properties? on what basis "unsatisfactory"?). Will look into this. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

The Challenges section of the Standard Model lists these problems. Too many physicists to mention, I suspect. Can't find this statement in the current article but if it reemerges, suggest linking to Physics beyond the Standard Model. Puzl bustr (talk) 22:17, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

• What different functions, if any, would the multiple Higgs bosons serve in the extensions to the Standard Model

Good question, will try to research it but at the moment - honest answer is no idea. Good question! FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:01, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

My understanding is that the multiple Higgs particles are there because the special requirements of the particular extension theory require them in order to be consistent. For example, in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) you have to have superpartners so you get a Higgsino, even if you didn't want one:-) I don't know the details but I would say the various Higgs bosons (not the Higgsino, it isn't a boson) are together responsible for the electroweak symmetry-breaking (EWSB) which results in the assigning of mass to particles. It is well-known that EWSB occurs and some of the details are known but there are any number of ways in which you can introduce it into your theory. Hopefully the LHC will help sort out this mess by scouring for bosons in the appropriate mass range. Puzl bustr (talk) 22:18, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The SM is just the simplest realization of the Higgs mechanism: one SU(2) doublet of complex fields corresponds to four degrees of freedom, three of which are "eaten" by the gauge bosons while the fourth is the physical Higgs boson. However, there is no reason in principle to assume that the Higgs mechanism is realized in the simplest way. There might e.g. be two SU(2) doublets, in which case the role of the SM Higgs would be played by two combinations of the neutral components of the two doublets, and there would be three more physical fields (one pseudoscalar and two charged). This is e.g. how the Higgs mechanism is realized in the MSSM (because supersymmetry makes it impossible to give mass to both up-type and down-type fermions with just one Higgs doublet). In summary, I would not say that the additional Higgses "serve different functions", it's more like the role of the SM Higgs is spread among multiple particles. Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:53, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

StringTheory¹¹ 04:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Alternative mechanisms for electroweak symmetry breaking

• The first para needs a ref
• The last sentence needs a ref

StringTheory¹¹ 04:47, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Experimental search

• How quickly is the Higgs boson predicted to decay?

"The tau lepton is a heavy brethren of the electron. Due to its large mass (approximately 3500 times the mass of the electron) it decays in less than a trillionth of a second after creation into electrons, muons or hadrons (a bunch of quarks)". I found this quote in [1] which serves to explain that, in essence, the heavier the particle the faster the decay. The mass of the tau from Standard Model (SM) is 1.78 GeV and we now expect the SM Higgs to have mass around 125 GeV so you can see it decays pretty fast! I would suggest quoting "less than a trillionth of a second". But I am no expert and would prefer to track down a direct reference. Working on it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Puzl bustr (talk • contribs) 23:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

No longer working on it. Can't find a direct reference to the decay half life of the Higgs. That may not be surprising as it may not even exist and even if it does until it is discovered there may not be enough information to compute the half-life theoretically. Awaiting an expert who knows how to do the calculations. My guess is that, though there are massive variations in half-lives with mass, you would still expect a very heavy particle to have a very short half-life. Also, if the Higgs exists and has a long enough half-life to survive to reach a detector, it would surely have shown up by either being detected or sailing through the detector and leaving its indirect imprint in missing momentum. All the really heavy particles detected by accelerators have been detected through their decays. Puzl bustr (talk) 13:40, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Decided to be bold and fixed this by clarifying that the rapid decay of the Higgs is expected, not necessarily known, because of the decay rates of similarly high mass particles. If this is wrong or the half-life can be theoretically calculated, please amend the article. By comparing with the known decay rates of the similar mass W and Z particles gave a quantification of what the Higgs decay rate might be. It could vary by several orders of magnitude and still be too rapid to detect. Puzl bustr (talk) 18:25, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

This is wrong, the decay width of the Higgs boson can be theoretically calculated (in a given model, e.g. the Standard Model) and is not related to the decay widths of W and Z. See e.g. this rather old reference. Please refrain from modifying the article if you are not sure of what you are writing. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:35, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant, I knew I could provoke someone into providing a reference! From Decay width the mean lifetime is $\hbar /\Gamma$, where $\Gamma$ is the decay width. So from the graph in your reference, with the Higgs mass around 125 GeV, $\Gamma$ for the standard model Higgs boson is, extremely approximately, somewhere between 10^-2 and 10^-3 GeV. From Planck constant $\hbar$ is about 6.57*10^-16 1 eV. So the Higgs boson mean lifetime is between 6.57*10^-23 s and 6.57*10^-22 s. All the reviewer wanted was a qualification of how quickly the Higgs boson decays. I don't want to get into an edit war so I'm not going to make any change myself. But if anyone wants to do the calculation for themselves and put in some helpful qualification at this point, they can. Meanwhile, I shall retire from this discussion and lick my wounds. Puzl bustr (talk) 17:44, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

• Second para needs a ref.
• Last sentence of third para needs a ref.

StringTheory¹¹ 20:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Timeline of experimental evidence

• All appears to be good here.

StringTheory¹¹ 20:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

"The God Particle"

• There should not be quotation marks in the heading

StringTheory¹¹ 20:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Why not? They seem to me to be warranted both for use–mention distinction reasons (the section is about the phrase "the God particle", not about the particle itself) and for scare quotes reasons (we don't want to ‘endorse’ that phrase). ― A. di M.​  21:23, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Removed the quotes in the heading. They aren't appropriate in a section heading, only in the context of a sentence which describes why the use is deprecated. That correct use of the quotes in the section is maintained. Hopefully that is acceptable. Puzl bustr (talk) 18:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

My change was reverted. After thinking about it, I agree with the reversion. Removing the quotes seems to lend an authority to the phrase it doesn't deserve. Puzl bustr (talk) 23:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I would recommend retiring the tiresome and now over-quoted phrase regarding 'God Particle'--"a name disliked by many scientists." First, 'liking' or 'disliking,' even when scientists are the actors, is completely and absolutely irrelevant requisite for scientific fact, other than detaining or accelerating inquiry. Second, it's not a God particle merely because scientists don't like the term. A recent Economist article pretty well nailed it without being so dismissive outright: "Such power to affect the whole universe has led some to dub the Higgs 'the God particle'. That, it is not. It does not explain creation itself." (The Higgs Boson, Jul 7th 2012 print edition of The Economist). Catrachos (talk) 18:53, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, retiring phrases isn't really the purview of an encyclopedia as I understand it. If it has actually fallen both out of favor and out of any historical significance with our sources in general because of that economist article, then so be it. Darryl from Mars (talk) 11:39, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Leon M. Lederman wanted to call it the goddamn particle but his publisher would not allow it so it was changed to the god particle for his publication. 10 July 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.22.176.245 (talk) 19:57, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

His publication in 1993 was The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? 11 July 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.22.156.147 (talk) 12:31, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

For the Layman

Is there any chance that someone could write a short article understandable by the layman? I have read and re-read the article and could easily be reading another language - it's so complicated!

By the way, English is my mother tongue.

 ---- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Malchris (talk • contribs) 10:46, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this article ought to be more accessible – lots of laymen will want to read it, whereas physicists can read about more advanced detail at Higgs mechanism etc. ― A. di M.​  11:08, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I've rewritten what looks like the most confusing part of the introduction (without "dumbing it down"); the detailed precise data is in the body of the article. Is this better? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:17, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

It looks better now. ― A. di M.​  16:27, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed this has become an increasingly common problem on wikipedia, when it comes to articles on scientific topics. Articles should be encyclopedic, providing a rounded and concise understanding of the topic, not a textbook only understandable to a person with a background in the particular science. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.62.249.99 (talk) 19:08, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

BTW, when the dust settles, we should take lots of stuff out of the section “Experimental search”, according to the ‘will people give a damn about this ten years from now’ criterion. IMO there's not much point in keeping any more stuff than the limits as of when the LEP was shut down, the limits as of when the Tevatron was shut down, and the most recent results available. ― A. di M.​  19:28, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully putting a lot of the timeline of findings into a timeline section is a start. Long term I can see a "timeline of the search" being a "stayer" in this article. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't expect this can be made understandable to the layman. The news reports this week following the CERN announcements of likely discovery were accompanied with the statements that the Higgs Boson provides all matter with mass. However, since the introduction to this article contains the lines "Because all particles within atoms contribute to an atom's mass and some of these do not interact with the Higgs field, the Higgs interaction can account for only some (about 1%) of the mass of ordinary matter" it seems to me that all the news reports are wildly incorrect (no surprise) and everything I wanted to know about this event is not going to be explained to me, being a layman. I greatly admire the fellows (male and female) who do understand all this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.180.174.91 (talk) 02:24, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

The Higgs provides all subatomic particles with mass. 100% of the mass of the electron comes from the Higgs. However, the vast majority of the masses of the proton and neutron come from the interaction energies of the up and down quarks composing them via E/c^2=m. So the reports are correct that the Higgs provides all matter with mass (all subatomic particles except photons and gluons get mass from the Higgs) but it is also correct that only about 1% of the mass of your chair comes from the Higgs because it is swamped by the quark interactions. Law of Entropy (talk) 16:40, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

the organization of the introduction is terrible. you start with saying it is an elementary particle, jump to telling us who it is known for because he theorized it's existence, then go back to poorly explaining what it is. then afterwards, the way the article is written now, i see this: "theory(just not labeled as such): [higgs boson/field explain why things have mass]. this theory says they gain mass by interacting with the field, it also says that a higgs boson should exist because it is part of the field." that makes no sense. specify the theory you are using before you go using it to explain the entire concept. Just because it is a complicated topic doesnt mean writer's etiquette should go out the window. there is a reason college forces *everyone* to take those writing classes. 76.25.228.41 (talk) 20:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Why so rare and hard to find?

Since the effects of this particle (mass) seem to be ubiquitous, it is very unclear to us ordinary mortals why the particle should be so rare and hard to find. It would be useful if the article could explain this point. 86.179.113.11 (talk) 02:20, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

A fair point, we cover a lot of that already.

• It's extremely massive hence takes a huge amount of energy (comparatively) to produce;
• The energies involved require high energy collisions and even so a lot of luck;
• It decays extremely quickly, too fast to directly detect, so you have to create and then analyze an immense number of particle patterns to exclude all the other things it could be;
• A "find" requires a very high level of certainty (of the order of 1 in a million +/- a factor) so again you need enough collisions with other causes excluded to allow that extreme level of certainty;
• Technically creating and controlling that level of energy in subatomic particles is a staggering feat of engineering;
• Theory doesn't actually say where to look in the first place (even if it exists) so you have to build a machine capable, build detectors capable, then replicate all of this, then recheck for every and any energy range it could be;
• Last because there is so much new, you do the whole thing with more than one different experiment (in this case ATLAS and CMS) so if you do think you're seeing something, or for some reason something odd happens, you have a second set of results completely different in origin to cross-check with.

Actually that is quite a lot! FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Some additional remarks:

• Not all mass is due to the Higgs Field. In fact, most of the mass that we observe in every day life is simply QCD binding energy! It is only the mass of the fundamental particles which are produced by the Higgs mechanism.
• The masses of the fundamental particle are due to the ground state of the Higgs field. The Higgs particle is an excitation of this field. These excitations are rare because of the reasons listed above.

TR 16:38, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

@FT2, thanks, all those things make sense, but don't really answer the question I had in mind, which perhaps I did not express very clearly. Those things explain why the particle might be hard to create, but they do not explain how a particle so elusive could be implicated in endowing stuff with mass, which is how the popular explanation goes. The obvious question when I hear those popular explanations is why, since almost everything has mass, is space not stuffed with these Higgs particles, or, conversely, why, if there are not countless of these particles pervading all space, does anything at all have mass? The picture is no doubt more complicated that popular science explanations have it, and I suppose the answer is related to TR's points. 86.160.84.196 (talk) 01:45, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, the points I mentioned above address exactly that issue. First of all, it is the ground state of the Higgs field that gives fundamental their mass. The Higgs particle is an excitation of the Higgs field above the groundstate. The upshot of this is that there do not need to be "countless Higgs particles pervading all space" to provide fundamental particles their mass. (In fact, there are almost none.)

The second point I made (listed first) is that most of the mass you encounter in the real world is not due to the Higgs mechanism. About 95% of the mass of atoms and molecules is due to the binding energy of the quarks.TR 10:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

See also Yukawa interaction#Spontaneous symmetry breaking which briefly describes the mechanism giving rise to the masses of elementary fermions in terms of an interaction of two fields, the Higgs field (bosonic) and Dirac field (fermionic). This is not the same as an interaction of particles, so you don't require any actual Higgs bosons to interact with fermions. I think that detecting the Higgs boson through its decays (if that does happen!) would lead to information about the Higgs field, and it's all about understanding the fields. Puzl bustr (talk) 15:40, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

I would like to repeat the question why it was so hard to find, considering it has 125 GeV mass. The answer didn't fully answer the question, since the Z boson has 91 GeV mass and the top quark has 173 GeV mass and both were found before 1996.

Not rare... just hard to find (or, more precisely, to detect) because it is so heavy. As has been stated, it is hard to find because it is a heavy particle and requires a super-massive accelerator to generate the required impact to release one on demand. Which is why CERN is the only accelerator that can do it. On a side note, whether the effects of the particle are ubiquitous or not, in neither case does it follow that it would be either rare (which it is not) or hard to find. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.180.174.91 (talk) 03:29, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Results

Joe Incandela just reported that the CMS experiment has found a new boson at 125.3 +/- 0.6 GeV with 4.9 standard deviations significance (in agreement with the standard model).85.230.137.182 (talk) 08:03, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

We don't know if it's the Higgs yet or an unexpected new boson. Readro (talk) 08:35, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

True (but it seems very likely). Fabiola Gianotti from ATLAS reported a signal at 126.5 GeV with 5.0 sigma confidence. Although I'm not sure if the confidence was lower if you consider the "look elsewhere effect"...85.230.137.182 (talk) 08:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Relevant "Results" Reference? => Video (04:38) - CERN Announcement (4 July 2012) of Higgs Boson Discovery - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 13:53, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

To state the Higgs boson has been discovered (July 2012) is wrong and must be removed. A so far unknown particle has been detected, but whether it is the Higgs, is still a theoretical guess. The likelihood of this guess being true has nothing to do with the probability of the detection as such, which is > 99.9999%. At the press conference it was explicitly stated that they do not know when the properites characterizing the Higgs will be tested. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.151.209.196 (talk) 18:05, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is correct. From [2]:

So once the discovery is confirmed, the next question is: "What kind of Higgs boson do we have"? Positive identification of the new particle's characteristics will take considerable time and data. It's rather like spotting a familiar face from afar; closer observation might be needed to tell whether it's an old friend who loves coffee, or her identical twin sister who favours tea. But whatever form the Higgs particle takes, our understanding of the universe is about to change.

So they are calling it a Higgs but are unsure what kind of Higgs it is. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

No it is correct, during the press conference they said they personally believed it must be the Higgs boson, but the only thing they were willing to explicitly confirm (i.e. based on experimental data) was that they had found a new boson consistent with the standard model Higgs boson (although lighter than expected). That it was lighter than expected might be worth mentioning? 85.230.137.182 (talk) 22:28, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

History Section

Please add a link to the page about the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, after whom this particle is half-named. I find the omission of the Indian physicist's contribution prejudicial, to say the least. He should also be mentioned in the introduction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dontforgetthebose (talk • contribs) 18:35, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

See "The Bose in the particle: The Higgs bit we know. But the boson? Western science is overlooking India’s contribution" (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3602966.ece). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dontforgetthebose (talk • contribs) 18:41, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

First of all please assume good faith before making accusations of prejudice. Second, this topic has been discussed already and a consensus reached based on accuracy not prejudice:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Higgs_boson/Archive_2#Origins_of_.22boson.22_in_article_.28collated_threads.29

Hope this helps! Woz2 (talk) 19:01, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

The caption on the picture in the History section seems to have been hijacked by someone, could someone else delete the impromptu Bose biography? I'm not savvy enough to do so.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.162.184.207 (talk • contribs) 08:04, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Future name of the particle?

Is there anything available on a possible future name change for the particle? The name 'Higgs boson' seems rather different compared to other particle names, so is there any talk about changing it when it's discovered, or are they going to keep the current name? CodeCat (talk) 17:13, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

No one knows. It will probably retain the name "Higgs boson" because that is what just about everyone in the field calls it. --Falcorian ^(talk) 20:27, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Why would the name change? 71.101.41.253 (talk) 21:56, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Well all the other particles have names with just one word, and this particle's name has two words. I thought they would follow the same procedure like they do with chemical elements, and let the discoverers decide the final name. Maybe they will call it the higgson? Or the cernon? Just curious! :) CodeCat (talk) 22:02, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

We also have the names Goldstone boson, Dirac fermion and Majorana fermion, although these do not refer to specific particles. Another issue is that most particles also have one-character symbols, such as μ and W, possibly adorned with sub- and superscripts (with J/ψ as a strange exceptional case). As far as I know, no character has yet been assigned to the Higgs boson, although H would seem to be the obvious choice.  --Lambiam 23:03, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, PDG (for example)[3] already consistently use H for the SM Higgs boson. I think the five MSSM Higgs bosons already have widely accepted standard symbols too. A. di M. (talk) 09:27, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

In regards to the two name thing: most people just say "Higgs", much like the W boson and Z boson are normally just refered to as "W" and "Z". Heck, even the muon is often referred to in conversation as just "mu". ;-) I guess we're lazy! --Falcorian ^(talk) 02:20, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

The chances that the Higgs will change name is somewhere between zip and nil. Other particles have been predicted before and most kept their original names after discovery. These include the tau lepton, the top quark, the Z boson, the W boson, and the gluon. Dauto (talk) 03:32, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

(Nitpick: while the name “top quark” was actually coined earlier than “truth quark”, I suspect that before it was discovered the latter name was more common. A. di M. (talk) 09:29, 5 July 2012 (UTC))

"New Particle" is inaccurate

To say that the particle that was discovered is "new" is like saying that America was new when Columbus came. The "news" page and also the article itself just remove use of the phrase "new particle" unless evidence suggests that the particle was created by man for the first time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ren Guy (talk • contribs) 22:36, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure... I think 'new' can also mean 'something we didn't know about before'. In the time of Columbus, people called America the new world, didn't they? Even though it always existed? CodeCat (talk) 22:42, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Ren Guy -- new means new, not something that has existed but has just been discovered. ("New World" was not accurate either.) So I have changed "new" to "undiscovered", but because they don't really know what it might be if it is not the Higgs Boson, I have added "possibly." If there is a source that says there is no possibility that it is actually a previously known particle, I suppose we could remove "possibly". Neutron (talk) 23:14, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

It may not have been accurate, but it is what people said, and it's how the word 'new' can be understood in some contexts. Unless you have a citation about the meaning of 'new'? :p CodeCat (talk) 23:18, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Someone's forgetting Leif Eriksson - disregarding that, the Higgs boson is technically 'new' as its existence was unproven, therefore our near-proving of it has just introduced it to us, making it, from our point of view, new. 217.65.192.93 (talk) 01:25, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

This use of the word 'new' is quite common and perfectly acceptable. Let's not be pedantic. Dauto (talk) 03:27, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

how far you can go against stated declarations

re: why this article is locked? Fix misquoted value. The σ differ by .1 . 99.90.197.87 (talk)

• 4 July 2012 – the CMS collaboration "announces the discovery of a boson with mass 125.3 ± 0.6 GeV/c² within 4.9 sigma" and the ATLAS collaboration announced that "we observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV." These findings meet the formal level required to announce a new particle which is "consistent with" the Higgs boson, but scientists are cautious as to whether it is formally identified as being the Higgs boson, pending further data collection and analysis.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.90.197.87 (talk • contribs) 06:08:17, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Some kind of section needed for "announcement/aftermath/impact" or "wider cultural impact of the search"

With the recent announcement, I think the article is now missing a section. Topics I would expect to see covered:

• Cultural impact of the search for the Higgs - how it was seen initially, how Higgs boson and search have been (and are now) represented and seen outside the physics community.
• The announcement, how it was represented, "significant voices" in the present scientific and media coverage, aftermath
• Key significant viewpoints in the analysis of the search and discovery
• Analysis of implications and next steps.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 10:52, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

It wouldn't be a bad idea. The section 'God particle' could probably be incorporated into it as well as the name is part of the media hype. CodeCat (talk) 12:04, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Can you kickstart this? Busy times here. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:48, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I'm not really good with writing big sections like that (finding citations especially) so I'd prefer to decline for now. CodeCat (talk) 12:49, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Someone else want to go for it? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:01, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Inconsistencies and Explanations Needed for the Non-physicist

The lay explanation needs to explain why a new particle is needed to explain mass. I thought mass was a characteristic of matter, and therefore needed no explanation. Also it needs to explain why, if a Higgs Boson is so important for the existence of mass it is so rare and hard to detect. Surely, if mass doesn't exist without it, then given the widespread existence of mass, then the Higgs Boson would have to be extremely common throughout the universe (at least one in each atom?) and be easy to detect. I don't agree with some (see above) that one should have to read every related article on physics in Wikipedia to read this one. For example, a short explanation of what a Boson is would be useful. --Zeamays (talk) 13:25, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

The boson doesn't make the mass, the field does. The boson is a significant deviation from the normal state of the field. Unfortunately, what a boson is is actually almost completely not relevant at all here, and really does belong is some other article, like Boson. Because applying the principle that you should be able to understand anything you want in one article, to explain that, we would be explaining spin, and wave functions, and quantum mechanics....Darryl from Mars (talk) 13:37, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

At the level of fundamental particle physics, mass is apparently not an actual "property" of matter; rather it emerges ina consistent manner due to forces and fields that act and between those particles (according to best theories). This isn't really very outside everyday experience. For example, we think water "cannot" support objects (but it can if they are small due to surface tension), that fluids cannot flow uphill (but they sometimes can), that everyday objects are solid (but they are almost all empty space in and between atoms), that objects cannot vanish from A and appear at B (but they do at the quantum level), and so on. In simple terms, a lot of what we see and believe is "real" at the everyday level is a kind of illusion created by trillions of particles and force carriers and god knows what, giving rise to large scale epiphenomenae. It seems that the property we know as "mass" is yet another of these things. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:50, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Those helpful explanations need to be placed into the article. Since Darryl from Mars and FT2 provided those explanations, I take it they agree that the article needs further clarification. --Zeamays (talk) 14:40, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

FT2, I would say that it is a property of matter but that the way it manifests itself is not. Charge is also a property, but electromagnetism is how it manifests itself. Or am I misunderstanding something? CodeCat (talk) 14:51, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

At this level it's almost semantics to try and separate what is a "property" of the fabric of this universe and what is an "emergent" or "epiphenomenon" of other properties. From the perspective of physicists trying to develop a fundamental model of the physical universe though, it's clear that any competent model needs some way to produce the results (or demonstrate the behaviors) that we would interpret as "mass". Whether that implies that mass is an inherent or an emergent property of certain particles, is probably beyond the scope of this talk page though :) FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:32, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps an explanation is needed of what relevance the Higgs boson would have to the layman's quotidian existance. For instance, ray guns, microwaves, zombie apocalypses--what hath the Higgs boson wrought? What will be buying in Wal-Mart this Christmas that wouldn't have been created except for the discovery of the Higgs boson? Something needed to be added that is identifiable and conceivable to the average nitwits who knows who Snooki is but not what the Vice President of the United States does and scratches their collective heads wondering if Higgs boson was the corrupt sheriff in Smokey and the Bandit or some country band we only hear of during the Grammys.--ColonelHenry (talk) 02:41, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

@CH - my own answer: it often doesn't work that way with major "pure science" discoveries. They don't tend to have immediate uses, rather the uses emerge and the knowledge is waiting to support them. Take elecronics. The ancient greeks knew about electrostatic forces, the electron was speculated to exist purely as a way to explain chemical behaviors in 1838..... now look what we gain from it in real terms. Quantum mechanics was the same - what on earth use can it be to prove whether a proton is really made of quarks. Nowadays, quantum theory underlines the reliable operation of microelectronics, tunnelling effects are used in the lab. What use was it to know if light travels at 186k miles an hour or immediately, in the age of horse and steam of the 1900s? GPS, fiberoptics and myriad devices are based on that knowledge. What use to be able to time nanoseconds and picoseconds? GPS, microelectronics. Quantum effects underpin everything from your hard drive, to modern satellite and communications, to medical and genetic research. These in turn underpin (for the selfishly human-centric) the global supply of food and resources, human rights, education, potentially lifting of many from poverty, the arts, the ability of widespread communities and families to remain in contact, protecting of knowledge otherwise lost, and other benefits.

Knowing that we can surpass one hurdle often has huge ripples - it might encourage others to research other rich areas they wouldn't have done, with completely unforeseen benefits. These often can't be predicted at all but can be the most profound long term (think of Columbus).

In other words, a reader asking that question needs to fast forward a few decades before asking if proving the Higgs boson made a difference. Claiming there's no practical uses right now, today, is a bit like arguing that a newborn baby is worthless because nobody can prove at birth he/she will change the world, write a book, or whatever. We can't list right now the exact uses it will offer humanity if knew whether the Standard Model is correct or not, but from the past record, it would be a very foolish person who argued that in 200 years it won't repay us many times over. None of this is suitable for Wikipedia unless we can find significant analysis to write a section on it. If we could, it wouldn't be a bad idea though. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 06:46, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Getting past physics jargon for the layman

Some quick suggestions, to make this article more understandable for the curious layman.

(fyi - my educational background is engineering physics, so the technical details aren't lost on me, but I'm echoing the need for the public to have some information they can understand).

Most people aren't aware of the basic jargon, for example, the following terms are greek even to the highly educated without physics training at the undergraduate level: - standard model - particle physics - scalars and vectors - spin - quantum - matter

I believe that most of the public's grasp of physics ends at the idea that atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, and have a picture of electrons orbiting a nucleus like planets around the sun. Most people wouldn't be able to name the basic forces, or be able to accurately describe the differences between forces, momentum, or energy.

I would suggest the following

- start with the context of the physics problem (even if it somewhat repeats other articles)
- Most people learned about protons, neutrons and electrons in high school - Particle physics is about understanding "particles" that are even smaller.
- In the early days of physics, light / energy and matter seemed like very different things, but as einstein and other scientists developed new theories at the turn of the century, there was an effort to unify human understanding of these phenomena - that's what relativity, quantum physics, and the standard model are all about
- There are still unanswered questions - physics understanding coalesced to the 'Standard Model', which describes even "smaller" particles than protons, neutrons and electrons, which describe basic forces like gravity and electromagnetism.
- this understanding has enabled the technology of this last century including wireless communication
- Einstein's famous equation e=mc^2 relates the conversion of mass into energy - which is how we get energy in a nuclear power plant (and why that process is so completely different from chemical sources of energy like the burning of fossil fuels)
- Despite this fantastic improvement in our understanding - there are still huge gaps - the smaller particles that were first described could not explain how particles that are smaller than atoms ("subatomic" particles) obtained or lost their mass in this conversion - enter the Higgs boson (here admittedly I am probably oversimplifying - but at least I'm trying to illustrate the kind of understanding that I believe most lay people might seek).

Then go on to explain how the Higgs boson helps. Godwin.liu (talk) 14:10, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

While the format makes it hard to read here, this may be just the thing for Introduction to the Higgs field. Darryl from Mars (talk) 14:14, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree with most of your points, except the one about applications. I am unaware of any applications of physics that require understanding of these new particles and force fields that are new since I took college physics courses in the mid-1960s. We need an explanation of why a Higgs Boson is so important to mass if it is so rare and difficult to observe. Mass is a property of all matter and of energy, so why is a new particle required? --Zeamays (talk) 14:51, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

One famous example is positron emission tomography. 85.230.137.182 (talk) 15:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

The 1960s may seem like long ago, but radioactive decay was known in the 1890s and the positron was discovered in the 1930s. --Zeamays (talk) 15:47, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I think this article should try and focus on the higgs-boson, explaining particle physics (etc) belongs to other articles. (And electrons are elemental particles even if protons and neutrons are not). I do share your concern that the article is difficult to make sense of for anyone who have not studied physics at a university though. 85.230.137.182 (talk) 15:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps Relevant? - (And Added To External Links Section) => "Video1 (07:44) + Video2 (07:44) - Higgs Boson Explained by CERN Physicist, Dr. Daniel Whiteson (16 June 2011)." - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 15:17, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Nitpicks:

• even "smaller" particles than [...] electrons – nope; electrons are elementary particles in the SM;
• describe basic forces like gravity – gravity is outside the scope of the SM;
• this understanding has enabled the technology of this last century including wireless communication – actually, wireless communication doesn't need any more electrodynamics than was known in 1900 as far as I know;
• which is how we get energy in a nuclear power plant (and why that process is so completely different from chemical sources of energy like the burning of fossil fuels) – nope, the difference is just quantitative. The molecules of water and CO2 produced in the combustion are lighter than those of fuel and oxygen burned much like in the case of fission products, though the difference is a few parts per billion for chemical combustion and several parts per thousand in nuclear reactions;

A. di M. (talk) 18:18, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

"Most people aren't aware of the basic jargon, for example, the following terms are greek even to the highly educated without physics training at the undergraduate level: - standard model - particle physics - scalars and vectors - spin - quantum - matter"

I don't really think so, GCSE mathematics is compulsory which teaches the basics of what a vector and scalar are, most people have an idea of what is meant by particle and as such can tell what particle physics is about, quantum, standard model and matter are all touched upon in GCSE physics. Spin is the only one I would agree with that most people wouldn't know of, but definitely not having to be at least an undergraduate it is touched upon in AS chemistry. I don't think many people would consider someone highly educated in any subject if they didn't even know up to GCSE standard. 80.195.215.233 (talk) 17:21, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, they teach what scalars and vectors are in the context of classical mechanics, but definitely not in the context of quantum field theory. I don't think I learnt that scalar boson means ‘spin-0 particle’ and vector boson means ‘spin-1 particle’ before my third year of university. And anyway I suspect that what little particle physics people learn in high school most of them forget within a few months. (OTOH, the OP's list does seem excessive to me. If a reader A. di M. (talk) 18:01, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Colour/color charge spelling

A small point, but I just noticed this article is tagged as being in the British dialect of English yet the word color in color charge is presently spelled (or should I say spelt?) the American way. Any one know the policy on this? Woz2 (talk) 16:34, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the change. As far as I know the policy is just to try to be as consistent as possible within the article. The only place I didn't make the change is in the word "Technicolor". Also, I was careful not to break any links, but if I missed anything I apologize in advance.DoctorLazarusLong (talk) 16:45, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Higgs mechanism/field

It seems to me that alot of this information is not actually about the boson but more generally about the field. there is no good article on the higgs field yet. The higgs mechanism page required updates too— Preceding unsigned comment added by Aperseghin (talk • contribs) 19:46, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Overview's attempt to assign intent

Old text: The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted in 1964 to explain the Higgs mechanism—the mechanism by which elementary particles are given mass.

New text: The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted in 1964 to explain the Higgs mechanism—the mechanism by which elementary particles have mass.

Controversial, perhaps, but there is nothing that can 'give' particles mass.

205.193.94.40 (talk) 19:31, 5 July 2012 (UTC)David Dougherty

Isn't it actually that what we call 'mass' is, in part, a particle's Higgs 'charge' (the strength with which it interacts with the Higgs field) much in the same way that electric charge describes how strongly a particle interacts with the electric field? Aside from that, a lot of explanations I've seen don't ascribe mass as such to the Higgs mechanism, but more specifically inertia. Does the Higgs mechanism have any effect at all on gravity (another result of mass)? CodeCat (talk) 19:50, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Confirmation of the particle's existence

Now that the particle has been "officially discovered" should the word 'hypothetical' in the first sentence of the article be removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Calydon (talk • contribs) 22:50, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Do you have a source to show that it has been confirmed? As far as I am aware, all that has happened is that a particle has been discovered that could be the Higgs boson. But they have not confirmed that it is, it could be something else. There still needs to be a lot of work done before they can actually be sure it's the Higgs. CodeCat (talk) 23:09, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

And a lot of work before they know what kind of Higgs particle it is.DoctorLazarusLong (talk) 23:34, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of that... it may be useful to mention in the article just what the different possible Higgs particles are. More exactly, how they differ and what the differences arise from and imply. Is anyone able to write something on that? CodeCat (talk) 23:40, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I am not well equipped to make the edit, though. "Dammit Jim I'm an Anthropologist not a Particle Physicist." My understanding of the search for the Higgs boson comes mainly from lightly perusing scientific publications, so I am not comfortable enough with the nitty gritty of it all to do more than lightly edit the article.DoctorLazarusLong (talk) 23:53, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I would replace "proposed" with "tentatively discovered" or something similar. The chance that this new boson is not the Higgs is nonzero, but it is vanishingly small. Law of Entropy (talk) 16:47, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Lead needs some help

Every time I visit this article, the lead is worse than it was the last time. Kaldari (talk) 23:47, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Give it some time. The article is being edited heavily right now as more and more information is added, all of which needs a proper place in the article. Once things have settled a bit, the article will probably be fixed up and cleaned out some. CodeCat (talk) 23:50, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

You're probably right. However, it's sad that we can't keep the lead in decent shape while millions of people are reading it. I tried tweaking it some more just now. I'm continually amazed at the ability of Wikipedia editors to mangle the English language :) At least it's not as bad as the lead for Second law of thermodynamics. Kaldari (talk) 00:10, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Tried improving it - may have made it worse. Although I have a couple of important points: 1) Whatever consensus we reach regarding technicality of the rest of the article, the lead should be as non-technical as possible. 2) The lead should definitely *mention* the recent experiments - after all that is the reason most of our readers are here in the first place. In general, I feel we need a much longer lead with the content of the entire article condensed in an easy-to-read format. Best, SPat ^talk 00:54, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Expanded to a medium sized 3 paragraph lede. Can't summarize this entire article in the lede without being fairly technical. At present, the lede is a "non-technical" summary. Truth and clarity are conjugate variables! Or is that truth and brevity? "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure, and never simple" (Oscar Wilde). [Later] And I see that somebody has pared down even my lede, so it's even farther away from being a summary.SBHarris 04:26, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Nice work. I've removed/altered some of that. One general comment: many sections feel as if they have been "dumbed down", as in someone is deliberately trying to talk down to the reader. For example, this line (which I have removed):

...detection around 125 GeV. (A GeV is used as a unit of particle mass. Using Einstein's famous equation E-mc², scientists use small energy units to describe particle masses. A GeV can be thought of as the energy of a billion electrons crossing the poles of a one-volt battery.)

I think the attempt should be to present in a clear and consistent manner, at the level accessible to a New Scientist or a National Geographic reader. This means that jargon should be minimized, but not necessarily eliminated (à la the GeV example above). I truth and clarity definitely commute, in fact they have a simultaneous eigenbasis that we can aim for ;) </nerdjoke> Best, SPat ^talk 04:59, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Electron and quark masses without Higgs mechanism

Okay, I can accept that neutrinos would be massless without Higgs, but neutrinos are nearly massless anyway. Take away Higgs from an electron, and how do we know it's mass wouldn't decreases by only the tiny rest mass that an electron neutrino has, and we'd hardly notice? After all, in charged fermions, SOME of the rest mass must be electromagnetic in origin. I always assumed 99.999% of it was in electrons, mainly because of the clue of the tiny rest mass of the otherwise identical electron neutrino. Why are we assuming none of the mass is electromagnetic, in quarks OR electrons?? Anybody? SBHarris 04:44, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

The core of the confusion here is the difference between the bare mass (as it appears in the Lagrangian) and physical mass (as measured in experiment). When we say that the Higgs field explains why elementary particles have mass, we mean bare mass, not physical mass.TR 08:45, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

compare the mass for the proton with the relatively tiny mass of the elctron, both posessing equal but opposite electric charge. or the mass of the electron with the other equally charged leptons, the tau and muon. it is clear there is another parameter, or degree of freedom, that leads to these particles having different mass. that additional parameter is their coupling to the higgs field.

not sure where you're getting the idea of 'electromagnetic mass' from...Jw2036 (talk) 06:31, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know the answer but Alan Barr, UK physics coordinator for LHC's ATLAS experiment, says "Without that field, the electrons and quarks would be massless, and would zip around at the speed of light." which makes it sound like electrons and quarks would behave like photons without the Higgs field http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/science_blog/110704.html hth Woz2 (talk) 12:48, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

The long answer. The issue Sbharris mentions actually occurs in QED. In QED, the electron mass gets any (infinite) correction due to the electromagnetic self energy. However, the same does not happen in the standard model. The reason for this is the assymmetry between left-handed and right-handed fermions, which have different SU(2) charges. Consequently, it is not possible to form a gauge invariant mass term, and since it cannot exist it also does not get higher order correction. The only way a mass can be included is if there is an addition scalar field with isospin-1/2 (such as the Higgs). It is this term, that then gets corrections due to EM selfenergy, but without such a field, such terms cannot exist.

Although, the may be a caveat with the last statement due to virtual mesons masquerading as a Higgs field. I know that the W/Z boson, can in fact acquire a mass this way, but I vaguely recall that a similar mechanism could not work for fermion masses. (This was a difficulty that technicolor models had)TR 15:32, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I had no idea that the standard model differed from QED in this regard. But I suppose that makes sense, as QED just posits a "bare mass" that nobody knows the value of, and this Higgs mechanism provides some bare mass (but alas, I gather still doesn't say how much). You suggest EM self-energy correction terms for charged leptons (and of course quarks, which are charged) ON TOP OF the bare mass term from the Higgs interaction? Anybody have any idea how large these are?

Again, I have the funny feeling that the "bare mass" of the electron (what it would have, if it had no charge) is the bare mass of the neutrino, which is a neutrino rest mass-- a few eV. An electron can't decay to a neutrino since it would have no way to get rid of its charge. But the neutrino looks suspiciously like the "pit" or undressed core of charged leptons, don't you think? An electron has one "pit", which we never see, and a muon has a muon neutrino, and a tau has a tau neutrino pit. When muons decay, they need to get rid of their muon neutrino pit and make a new electron neutrino core for the electron they will become, so they emit the muon neutrino and make an electron neutrino core by emitting an electron antineutrino, in a sort of pair-production (where one partner is emitted and the other kept). The fancy math of this is just flavor quantum number conservation, but mechanistically, it looks fishy that charged leptons are always far more massive than uncharged ones, does it not? Surely nature is trying to tell us that EM self-energy contributes to rest mass by some mechanism that has nothing to do with Higgs, and that makes you wonder why neutrinos have so little rest mass, but not NONE. SBHarris 20:16, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Massless fundamental particles cannot pick up the kind of quantum corrections to their masses that allow for mass derived from their charge. So, without a Higgs, the electron would be protected from gaining mass from its own electric field. For example, neutrinos are charged under the weak force and so would not be massless even without the Higgs due to quantum corrections from the Z boson, except massless particles are protected against such corrections and so the SM predicted neutrinos to be massless. As another example, gluons are charged under their own force, and yet remain massless because of this protection. Law of Entropy (talk) 16:51, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Request

Perhaps somebody with some insight in this could add an account of what has actually been studied in the "Experimental search" section (as opposed to a mere timeline of announcements). From the slideshow in the CMS presentation, I understand that the cumulative effect was seen by taking into account various decay modes (and consistency with the SM by calculating a number of production modes). Unfortunately, the slides presented alongside the video here have a low resolution so that the diagrams are partly illegible. My question would be to what extent (if at all) the Peskin–Takeuchi parameters plays a role here. I know they played a significant role in finding the top quark in the 1990s, whose mass is higher than that of the Higgs. I would like an explanation of why it was so much harder to find Higgs than to find the heavier quark, and if Peskin–Takeuchi is a part of the explanation. Thank you. --46.245.145.186 (talk) 06:42, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

PS, also the Peskin–Takeuchi parameter article mentions the Higgs boson and is in need of an update. I do not understand what the phrase "a reference point in the Standard Model" means in the context, so perhaps this could be clarified a bit. --46.245.145.186 (talk) 06:44, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

More basic request

As above, more explanation of the experimental search would be helpful for lay readers. My question is: Why has it taken so long to find the Higgs, and why are such high energies required, given that W and Z masses are of the same order? --Cedders^tk 07:51, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Because the Higgs usually decays to bottom quark pairs, and QCD produces such pairs about 10^7 times as often as the Higgs does, if memory serves. Good luck distinguishing your 10000 events on top of a stack of 100 billion. So, you have to look in obscure, rare decay channels to observe the Higgs, like h > gamma gamma, which occurs ~1/500. Compare this to the Z, which decays relatively often into two high energy muons or electrons, or the W, which decays to a high energy electron/muon and associated neutrino a large percentage of the time, all of which stand out above the overwhelming QCD background. Law of Entropy (talk) 16:58, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Higgs particle

Google Books search over English sources gives 30,900 hits for "Higgs particle" and 123,000 for "Higgs boson"; 30,900 is a significant number, and Higgs particle redirects here, thus I believe Higgs particle should stay in the lead. User:Jw2036 apparently disagrees and cites Google hits. They are also large for "Higgs particle", but with a lower ratio; however, Google hits are a weak argument for a scientific term. Materialscientist (talk) 11:53, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 6 July 2012

Only need to change a comma! The second sentence of the entry currently reads: "The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs, who along with others, proposed the mechanism that predicted such a particle in 1964."

It should read: "The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs who, along with others, proposed the mechanism that predicted such a particle in 1964."

Separating "who along with others" by commas (in this case) makes it an extraneous clause that should it be removed the sentence would still make sense (a bit like brackets). Currently, this isn't the case. By moving the comma to after the "who", it will be correct. It would also be correct to keep the comma after "Higgs", but one would still need to be added after the "who", i.e.:

"The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs, who, along with others, proposed the mechanism that predicted such a particle in 1964."

Many thanks!!

Davedachef (talk) 16:16, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Good catch. Done! Woz2 (talk) 16:31, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

What if the new particle isn't the standard Higgs boson?

Alternatively the newly discovered particle may not be exactly what the standard model of physics expects the Higgs boson to be, it could be a different and more exciting particle that some non-standard models of physics predict. If that is true the new particle may in the long run explain more than discovering the standard Higgs boson would have explained. Physics experts, please tell us, is the article below important?

• What If the New Particle Isn't the Higgs Boson? Proxima Centauri (talk) 17:02, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I would say it's fairly important but it's already known among scientists. It could be useful as a source for this article, although I'm not sure. After all, it deals more with the recent discoveries, whose connection to the Higgs is still unconfirmed, so it might be strange to discuss the what-ifs of it not being the Higgs boson on the Higgs boson article. Perhaps the experiment itself needs its own article (if it is notable enough; it would seem so), or maybe it could be added to the Large Hadron Collider article. CodeCat (talk) 17:08, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Negative Higgs-boson mass?

"and ATLAS of a boson with mass ∼126.5 GeV/c2"

That's a tilde for ‘approximately’, though I've seen fonts in which, at small sizes at least, it looks too much like a minus sign. A. di M. (talk) 18:27, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

So this is where all the Bose supporters are coming from!

I realise this isn't a forum, but if people keep coming here expecting the article to give credit to Satyendra Bose because of the word 'boson' I think it does help to be aware of all sides of the story. I came across this blog which details a statement from the Indian government about Bose's supposed role in the discovery. Of course Bose did have a big role in detailing the properties of bosons, for which he is credited in the class of particles named after him, but he had little to do with the Higgs boson in particular. I find the name the statement uses particularly telling: Higgs-Boson, with a hypen and capital B, as though the particle was named "Higgs-Bose particle" or something like it. They also call him a 'forgotten hero', although I expect pretty much all particle physicists know of his contributions. So these statements might explain why people are coming here expecting more credit for Bose... CodeCat (talk) 19:49, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Wonder if we're doing a WP:BEANS by opening this up again... but yes accuracy is being compromised by a combination of sloppy journalism and a desire to treat physics as nationalistic sport complete with cheerleaders: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3602966.ece ... An irony is it was another Brit -- Paul Dirac -- who coined the term boson in Bose's honour. Woz2 (talk) 20:46, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

People coming here wanting to insert Bose every time a boson is mentioned, are hereby given a WP name: Bosos. They are clowns. Just revert; do not give them a Bose soundsystem for their nutty ideas. SBHarris 22:23, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I think most of them have sincerely held but misinformed beliefs. Woz2 (talk) 00:34, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Truth

Why is the fact that Brout and Englert's paper CAME FIRST hidden? Is it because Higgs is British and this is the English wikipedia? Are British people more important according to the English wikipedia? It's quite logic to mention that all three 1964 papers are more or less the same (they proposed a mechanism which implied a field and a particle) and that Brout and Englert's paper came first, Higgs paper came a month later and the three others paper came last and contained a reference to Brout and Englert's work (which means they were aware of it existence). This is the true history and it should be mentioned.

It's already sad that Brout and Englert's work is completely ignored (although they were first, again). Wikipedia should not encourage this bias with Higgs mania.--Wester (talk) 22:05, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

This information is already present in the History section. Why does it belong in the lead of the article? The lead should only contain a brief overview of the basics of the topic. It is not censoring history or anything, the information is there, it just doesn't need to be part of the lead.DoctorLazarusLong (talk) 22:11, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

No it doesn't. It's saying that Higgs proposed it simultaneous with five other authors. It does not say that Brout and Englert's paper came a month earlier than Higg's and that Guralnik's, Hagen's and Kibble's paper came a few months later and contained a reference to Brout and Englert's work (and the then unpublished work by Higgs).--Wester (talk) 22:15, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

First of all, Wester, please assume good faith and don't accuse other editors of bias. We are trying to write an encyclopedia article including information about the difficult and contentious topic of who discovered what first using reliable sources. Please conduct yourself in a civil manner. Cheers! Woz2 (talk) 22:51, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Adding to this - Wikipedia isn't a place to rehash battles for this or that group. From the perspective of today and this article, the matter of which 1964 paper predated the other by a few weeks is not a big deal for the introduction on an article on a particle in the Standard Model. I would say that regardless of whatever order the papers had been released. It would be like hijacking the article on the Boeing 747 to argue who was responsible for inventing the jet engine or whether Mr Boeing's other partners were under-credited in the name of that corporation. To me, this isn't an argument we need to re-enact in Wikipedia. It would have a place in the article on the 1964 papers by reference to reliable sources, but I think it's already there. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:09, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

improper citation ~ plagiat. The fact other do it is not an excuse. Some above justifications err: adjustments show scientific truth is not respected here. 99.90.197.87 (talk) 09:16, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Higgs or BEH (or BEHGHK)

Editor "Wester" keeps modifying the article to redress what he/she perceives as an injustice in the naming of the boson, as is clear from is/her latest edit comment:

all papers were telling the same story, they all proposed it. This is the most complete story. It IS true that Brout's and Englert's paper came first and the naming of the particle to Higgs alone is a actually inadequate. Wheter you like it or not

Now, it is well known that the issue is a thorny one, but it's not up to Wikipedia editors to solve it. It is a fact that the boson, right or wrong, has been called "Higgs boson" for the last forty years, and alternative names are not widespread (just have a look at the slides of Gianotti and Incandela's seminars). This is why mentioning the BEH-BEHGHK alternatives in the first line of the article, as Wester tried to do earlier, gives undue relevance to the issue. There also seems to be some consensus in the physics community (see e.g. this guy) on the fact that, while all six authors can lay claim to the Higgs mechanism, Peter Higgs was the first to mention the existence of an additional massive particle, and the first to elaborate (in a later paper) on its properties and its decays. But again, it's not up to Wikipedia editors to decide who's right or wrong, we can only report what reliable secondary sources say about the issue. From this point of view, it is OK to quote this or this newspaper articles about the naming disputes, although I would rather quote them further down in the paper (e.g. in the History section). On the other hand, it is NOT OK to quote some random webpage of a Belgian university to "prove the point" that somebody actually calls it BEH boson, as Wester (I suppose) did in the first sentence of the Overview section. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:28, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Isn't the neutral name "God particle" more common actually? ;) 85.230.137.182 (talk) 22:40, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

The neutral name is 'scalar boson'. 'God particle' is a horrible name since it is very misleading. The BEH boson has nothing to do with God (unless you're a creationist of course ;-) ) .--Wester (talk) 22:52, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

“Scalar boson” can also be taken literally to mean any spin-0 boson. A. di M. (talk) 00:34, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

A agree that 'Higgs boson' is the common name and of course should be used as the title and in the article. But there is nothing wrong with mentioning that it's a bit arbitrary that it's named only after Higgs. And also Brout and Englert should be prominently mentioned. As well as Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble. Also other names which are in use like Brout-Englert-Higgs boson, BEH boson, BEHGHK boson should be mentioned.

BTW: I do not agree with the view that Higgs was the first to actually mention the particle to justify that he is the 'true' discoverer. They all proposed a mechanism which is inextricably linked to a new field and a new particle. So they all theorised the BEH particle, whether they explicitly mentioned it or not.--Wester (talk) 22:41, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

You don't seem to understand how Wikipedia works. It is wrong to mention that you find the naming arbitrary, and it is irrelevant whether you (or I) agree with the view that "Higgs is the 'true' discoverer". All we can do is report in a neutral way what reliable secondary sources tell us about it. Anyway, I added the publication dates of the three PRL papers in the History section, to make clearer which paper came first. Ptrslv72 (talk) 23:03, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

It's quite objective that it's arbitrary. Wikipedia should tell the whole story.

The naming issue was also widely covered in Belgian media. See eg. [4]. But also elsewhere. So it's not just me. It's a controversial issue which makes it worth mentioning.

BTW: I like your latest edit in the history section. It's good the way it is now. --Wester (talk) 23:11, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm far from knowing the language, but; is it at all possible there's a specific, nationalistic reason the Belgian media has a particular view of the issue? When an article in India mentions them, I'll be more impressed by the significance of the issue in terms of how it should be treated in this article...Darryl from Mars (talk) 23:43, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Ditto for the Belgian media crediting Bose. Woz2 (talk) 00:39, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

In this case though, we are probably able to find reliable sources that support the claims made in the newspaper, which is that the credit for Higgs is based on an error in reading the dates (my personal guess is that it's because Americans use Month-Day-Year and Belgians use Day-Month-Year!). That certainly is significant, even if it doesn't change how the particle is commonly named today. (And no I'm not Belgian) CodeCat (talk) 00:46, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

See my comment in the previous section. For whatever reasons, the names have ended up as they have ended up. If there is significant debate about the name in high quality sources, and not just a very minor 'fringe' view then some sources to refer to would be more useful than all the rhetoric. For example, if physics papers used other names, and the widely used choice of names has changed over the last 50 years, that would be sensible to mention. A few minor media references - as we seem to have now - is probably not. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:16, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

It is truly the Higgs-Bose particle, and Dr Bose deserves most credit for this

Why is there no mention of Bose who is the other inventor? This particle was jointly discovered by the extremely distinguished Dr. Satyendra Nath Bose of India. There can be no Higgs without Bose. Dr. Bose deserves most of the credit because he invented the particle long before Higgs. Higgs only added a flavor to it, similar to adding chocolate to ice cream which is a minor variation of the ice cream itself. It's the ice cream which is important here, not the chocolate variety. Asmatam (talk) 23:47, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry but you're misinformed. Satyendranath Bose did not know about the Higgs particle or work on its discovery. His work is in describing the physics common to all bosons, the so-called Bose-Einstein statistics. The Higgs boson is yet another kind of boson, like photons and gluons. So Bose did not contribute specifically to the Higgs boson's discovery, but he developed the theory of bosons in general, which serves as a base for theories of each individual kind of boson, including the Higgs. We don't say that Bose discovered the Higgs boson or worked on its discovery, just like we don't say he did those things for the photon or the gluon, as that would be rediculous. To give you an analogy that might help you understand the relationship: Isaac Newton developed laws of mechanics and gravity in the 17th century. In the early 20th century, Albert Einstein refined Newton's laws and this resulted in the theory of General Relativity. But we don't say that Newton discovered or helped to develop relativity. CodeCat (talk) 00:06, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

It's worse than that. S. Bose didn't name ANY particles, or even guess that there were an entire class of particles that were different from another class. He merely noted that if a certain kind of statistics were used to count photons (a known particle) you could derive Planck's laws in a new way. Albert Einstein generalized the statistics to certain other particles (thus making two classes by default), but knew this statistics couldn't apply to all particles, like electrons. The particle class that Bose-Einstein statistics DID apply to, were named "bosons" in Bose's honor, by Paul Dirac, in 1945, more than 20 years after Bose first thought in this new way about photons (but not any other paricle). So the class of particle that includes the Brout-Englert-Higgs particle, should really be called bose-einstein-dirac-ons, and omitting Einstein and Dirac is racism. The truth must out. I demand therefore that this article be renamed Brout-Englert-Higgs bose-einstein-dirac-on. If nobody objects I'll do it myself, per WP:BRD. <wink> SBHarris 03:24, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

But... What about Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble? ;-) A. di M. (talk) 07:18, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

My comment on them in the previous section. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:21, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

FWIW - Seems Somewhat Related? -> < ref name="NYT-20120706">Subramanian, Samanth (July 6, 2012). "For the Indian Father of the 'God Particle,' a Long Journey from Dhaka". New York Times. Retrieved July 7, 2012.</ref> - In Any Case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 09:25, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

This link isn't really any use. The article is titled "Indian father of the god particle" but doesn't give any suggestion that Bose had anything to do with the Higgs boson. In fact for an article supposedly about Bose's relationship to the Higgs boson, we find just one sentence: "In the word 'boson' ... is contained the surname of Satyendra Nath Bose". That is the only mention. The whole of the article apart from that one sentence is about his work on statistical physics, already covered under boson and Bose, and not really very much evidence of anything very significant for this page. We're probably done here. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:56, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Thank You For Your Comments - Yes, I Agree - No Problem Whatsoever - Seemed Worth A Mention Due To Timing, Title, Source & Related - In Any Regards - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 15:23, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

AS A HIGHLY CREDENTIALLED PATHOLOGIST WHO IS WORKING IN THE US I AM HIGHLY CONVERSANT WITH ALL ASPECTS OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. THEREFORE I FIND IT OBJECTIONABLE THAT WIKIPEDIA.ORG REFUSES TO ACCREDIT THE INDIAN SCIENTIST SATYENDRA NATH BOSE WITH THIS MOMENTOUS DISCOVERY WHICH BEARS HIS NAME. REPEAT: THIS DISCOVERY OF CERN BEARS THE NAME OF SATYENDRA NATH BOSE. THIS FACT HAS BEEN REPORTED BY INDIAN NEWSPAPERS. YOU MUST RECTIFY THIS INJUSTICE FORTHWITH. US-Patel (talk) 19:30, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Read the page Boson and you will see that Bose's contribution is acknowledged there. Despite what you may have read at the newspapers, Bose did not contribute to the Higgs boson theory. Dauto (talk) 20:21, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

But he is a highly credentialled pathologist, highly conversant with all aspects of scientific knowledge which can be found in the tabloid press. Furthermore, CAPS! 86.0.198.250 (talk) 00:47, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

maybe a good resource for 5 sigma explanation:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303962304577509213491189098.html July 6, 2012, 6:52 p.m. ET How to Be Sure You've Found a Higgs Boson By CARL BIALIK The physicists who announced the likely discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson particle this week were operating according to an extremely high standard of certainty. As was widely reported, in order to achieve discovery status their experiment had to clear a threshold of "five sigmas" of statistical significance. What precisely the five-sigma mark means, however, wasn't always clearly explained in the coverage of a ground-breaking development that could explain how particles have mass and, by extension, why planets and all other objects exist at all. That is partly because the five-sigma concept is somewhat counterintuitive...— Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.34.102.38 (talk • contribs) 02:14, 7 Jul 2012 (UTC)

Archive Higgs boson nominated for good article section?

The "Higgs boson nominated for good article" thread was brought back from the archives "on 5 July 2012, in case anyone wants to re-list for GA or to look up the GA outstanding issues". Given that the review was done on 27 Dec 2011 and a lot has changed since then, should the thread be archived again? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:22, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Hatting is another option of course. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:01, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

It still wouldn't pass, some of the sections need cleaning up and there's maintenance work to be done. I'm not that familiar with the Higgs boson, but I'll see what I can find in textbooks and the internet. James ^{(Talk • Contribs)} • 2:18pm • 04:18, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Having checked, i don't think the technical sections, timeline, experimental search etc are much changed - the recent discovery hasn't has much impact. The main changes have been to the intro and the new "easy understanding" sections. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:36, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I oppose this getting "good article" status. There are still a lot of problems. Some examples: 1) We're still getting complaints that lay people can't understand it. 2) There is repetition of certain points in different sections, as though one editor wasn't paying attention to what the other editor was writing. Yep, this needs work.206.248.157.184 (talk) 15:50, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Take help

From this source take help http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/265088/Higgs-particle Thanks.--♥ Kkm010 ♥ ^{♪ Talk ♪} ߷ _{♀ Contribs ♀} 09:21, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Is the third sentence of Note 2 correct?

A few days ago, I added a paraphrase from Alan Barr to Note 2 namely "However, without the Higgs mechanism quarks and electrons would be massless and would move at the speed of light." But now I'm having second thoughts: I'm wondering if Barr is correct or not. Electrons have a small extra mass over their bare mass from their photon "dressing" and quarks have a huge extra mass over their bare mass from their gluon "dressing." So my question to the experts here is "Would quarks and electrons really move at the speed of light if they were both a) massless AND b) dressed in their force carriers?" In other words is the Higgs mechanism required to give quarks and electrons mass, or is it simply in addition to the mass they "already have" from their force carrier dressing. (see also glueball) Thanks! Woz2 (talk) 13:36, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

The chiral symmetry of the photon-electron, photon-quark and gluon-quark interactions guarantees that, in both QED and QCD, the quantum corrections to the electron and quark masses are proportional to the masses themselves. Therefore, if quarks and electrons had zero bare mass, they would remain massless even after quantum corrections (i.e. what you call "dressing"). However, quarks would still be bound into hadrons. From this point of view, the statement that "quarks would zip around at the speed of light" could be considered inaccurate. Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:59, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks. So what you're saying is it possible for both to be true: you can zip around AND be bound e.g. a photon zipping back and forth inside a perfect laser cavity or gluons inside a glueball... But, what should we do about note 2? It seems that my addition is a bit misleading, but I don't know how to fix it without making it worse and/or much longer. Woz2 (talk) 15:19, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

The concept of mass for quarks inside a hadron is tricky, see e.g. here. In the comment above I was referring to the current quark masses (on the other hand, no such ambiguity exists for the leptons). As to your addition, perhaps it was not really necessary. The purpose of the footnote is to clarify that most of a hadron's mass is not due to the Higgs mechanism, and this is already accomplished by the first two sentences. Since it would be difficult to clarify the third sentence without entering too much in detail, we could just drop it. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:34, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Very good I'll delete it. I think I added confusion not clarity. The question I (and I'm guessing others) was hoping the article could answer is "If the Higgs field gives mass to the particles with proper mass, what would happen if someone flicked a switch and turned it off? Would the universe fly apart completely?" Maybe it's not a very useful question... Woz2 (talk) 17:49, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Question

"On 4 July 2012, the two main experiments at the LHC (ATLAS and CMS) both reported independently the confirmed existence of a previously unknown particle with a mass of about 125 GeV/c2 (about 133 proton masses, on the order of 10−25 kg), which is "consistent with the Higgs boson" and widely believed to be the Higgs boson. They cautioned that further work would be needed to confirm that it is indeed the Higgs boson (meaning that it has the theoretically predicted properties of the Higgs boson and is not some other previously unknown particle) and, if so, to determine which version of the Standard Model it best supports."

Would you kindly explain what exactly was observed? How do you know this is unknown particle? What if it was not Boson, but rather compendium of 133 protons stuck together?

70.53.225.161 (talk) 22:09, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

It has to do with probability, they look at a very large number of events and compare them to how probable a certain outcome should be if a higgs boson exist and if it does not. Imagine you wanted to see if a dice was somehow manipulated so side 6 would turn up more often. Let us say you can not inspect the dice directly, only see the outcome of each throw. Can you determine if the dice is unfair or if someone is simply lucky and get lots of sixes? If you get to see the outcome of many throws, you could record them. After many throws, if the dice is fair all sides should come up about the same amount of times, if it is unfair the side six should come up more than the others. When looking for the higgs boson, they know how often a "compendium of 133 protons" (or any other known combination) should turn up and have concluded that the outcome of the many recorded events does not match what they would have expected if there was no higgs boson at ~125.5 GeV. So there is most likely an unknown particle with that mass. Now they are going to try and figure out what the properties of this new particle is to see if it matches the standard model higgs boson or not. 85.230.137.182 (talk) 01:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

They found an excess of 2 photons at about ~125.5GeV. Excesses are caused by resonances when particles decay (133 protons would not decay into 2 photons as charge conservation and spin conservation prevents this). As it's 2 photon means that it's spin 0,2,4 so it is a boson. If it is the Higgs boson then it will be spin 0. Again the 2 photon tell us that it is neutral which the Standard Model Higgs is predicted to be. Obviously this is early days, so not all the information about this particle, that has been discovered, is in.Dja1979 (talk) 01:50, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

You didn't answer my main question: what exactly was observed? What kind of experiment was made? What was recorded and how?70.53.225.161 (talk) 13:59, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Go read Large Hadron Collider, ATLAS experiment and Compact Muon Solenoid. A. di M. (talk) 15:10, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I thought I did answer your question 70.53.225.161, They observed more 2 photons with an energy of 125.5GeV than they expected from noise. For the type of experiment and how it was recorded It's best if you read up on the experiments as it's complicated, but briefly they smash the protons together (actually quarks but that's off point) this creates a lot of energy. The energy then forms particles one of which is a Higgs. This Higgs then decays through various channels one of which is the two photon channel. The CMS and ATLAS detector are made up of various detecting material one of which is Electromagnetic calorimeters. It is in these calorimeters that the photons deposit their energy all 125.5GeV of it. The data is then compressed and stored and various selection cuts are made to the data by the analysis groups and the 125.5 GeV photons position and track are reconstructed so that it is seen that they have 125.5GeV of energy and they come from a point source. See my previous answer on why they know it isn't 133 protons stuck together and why it's a boson and what its mass is. We still, however, don't know it is a Higgs Boson.Dja1979 (talk) 19:08, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

So if I summarize it shortly, they didn't observe any particle named Higgs Boson, but rather 2 Photons which in certain apparatus registered a number which corresponds to Higgs Boson. Are they implying that these 2 photons were omitted by Higgs Boson? What is the reason for such implication? Any particle can omit photons.

70.53.225.161 (talk) 13:57, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

This isn't actually the place to ask such questions, as interesting as it is. This talk page is for discussing improvements/changes to the present article. For general questions like this please use the science reference desk. Polyamorph (talk) 14:24, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Quick answer anyhow (and agree, this isn't the page for such discussion) - indeed "any particle can emit photons". But in this case it's more like "very few particles will decay according to very specific decay routes, emitting very specific numbers of photons of very specific energies, and (in a number of decay paths) other particles again of very specific momentum, energy, spin, and the like. The LHC detectors capture a huge amount of data about each of the trillions of collision outcomes (ie what particles/photons are emitted, what properties they have, and what happens to them), and these have to follow a large number of well-established laws regarding conservation, and probabilities of various decays. So for example it might be possible to say (example only) something like this:

"X million proton-proton collisions occurred. N% should result in a Higgs boson creation if the Higgs boson has mass M. Of these Higgs bosons, 17.3% should decay this way, 42.6% that way, 29.44% a third way, and the rest in a fourth way. For each of these decay routes we know what particles and photons should be expected to reach our detectors, what energies they should be expected to have, what properties should be detected as they pass through, what proportion of them should further decay which ways....."

In other words, there is a lot of "If the Higgs boson existed as the Standard Model suggests, then we have a very good idea what we should see". Conversely given what we're seeing, the math can be worked backwards to say what the probability is that what we're seeing shows evidence of a Higgs boson of mass M. Repeat 300,000,000,000,000 times, then find multiple completely separate experiments, with completely different methods and detectors, and completely different teams, reached the same conclusion without conferring..... it gets you a very high level of certainty. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 17:58, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

If person reading my question is competent to respond, I see no reason why this place can not used for my question. After all, responses to my question would help to improve the contents of the article because those questions should be addressed in the article.

From the responses, I may infer only that the latest experiments did not produce data which would contradict existence of Higgs Boson. It is my understanding also that previous experiment did not produce any contradicting results either. So, what is the big deal then?

The big deal would start when you can produce this particle at will at the quantities you desire and make experiments to investigate its properties.70.53.225.161 (talk) 13:42, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

You've got it backwards, in a couple ways. data contradicting it isn't strictly possible, just not finding it. And the properties of the particle were, for the most part, understood beforehand; it's the fact that the thing they found (as there is undeniably [or, to five sigma] a 'thing' found) has the properties which they expected the Higgs Boson to have that makes them confident. Of course, I'm not arguing you have to be excited about this; if you really must have a big deal, I suggest Subway's $5 Footlong. Darryl from Mars (talk) 13:53, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

They have been colliding protons at very high energies. When the particles collide they recombine into new particles, for example two photons, according to certain rules (such as the total amount of energy needs to be the same, just like momentum, charge and spin, etc). If the higgs boson exist a collision could result in one being created, but it would immediately decay into more stable particles (like the two photons), therefore it is not possible to directly detect the higgs boson, instead they look at familiar particles like photons, etc. The problem was they did not know what mass (energy) the higgs boson would have, more than that it should exist within a certain mass/energy range so they had to look for anything out of the ordinary within that range. They knew approximately how many of each group of particles should be produced (how probable each type of decay) if there was no higgs boson, so they have been comparing the results with what to expect if the higgs boson did not exists. What they finally have found is that there is too many particles than expected in the 126 GeV area (like the excess of photon pairs) than there would be if there was no boson in that range, with 99.9999% certainty, so the conclusion is that they have found a new boson with a mass of ~126 GeV. The best known explanation is that it is the higgs boson. Indeed, it is even more interesting to find out what other properties this new particle has and if they are the same as predicted by theory, that is what they are going to do next but it requires even more data and will take many years. The discovery was exciting because up until now there have been a very real possibility the higgs boson did not exist at all, now it seems like there is strong reason to believe it does. In the end a theory is only a theory if it can not be verified by experiments, most theories turn out to be wrong. 85.230.137.182 (talk) 20:54, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Molasses analogy fails

The article says:

"The field can be pictured as a pool of molasses that "sticks" to the otherwise massless fundamental particles that travel through the field, converting them into particles with mass that form (for example) the components of atoms."

This analogy suggests that, like a marble moving through actual molasses, a particle moving through space would slow down and eventually stop. Obviously this is not what Newton's first law says and what we observe. So either the analogy should be removed, modified or the point should be made explicitly that the mollases-like nature of the Higgs field does not slow down moving particles. (I assume that the analogy does not imply that particles do eventually slow down in free space!) A poor analogy like this does not help people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Informationtheory (talk • contribs) 23:10, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

It is just a general analogy, it doesn't really try to say they are the same thing or have the exact same effect. I have wondered the same myself though... how can a force or field resist acceleration the way the Higgs field does? And is it the only field that does that? I do recall that accelerating charged particles emit photons, so is this similar? CodeCat (talk) 00:00, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion it is just a bad analogy, it is not like molasses. 85.230.137.182 (talk) 01:24, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

For inclusion in Wikipedia, it doesn't matter if the analogy is "good" or "bad", but simply whether or not the analogy can be verified to be in use, as reported by reliable sources. If a notable expert says that a widely-used analogy is "bad", then that fact can also be reported here. It looks like that molasses analogy has been tagged as uncited since January, so removal is probably appropriate now since there have been many, many eyes on this page and it has remained uncited. --Ds13 (talk) 01:37, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Naa, all things that are included should be verifiable but all things that are verifiable should not be included. 85.230.137.182 (talk) 16:59, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Pages 230 and 231 of Jim Baggott's (excellent BTW) "Quantum Story" has a different analogy for the Higgs field based on a cocktail party, a celebrity, and rumors of a celebrity. Not sure it's any more helpful than molasses. Woz2 (talk) 12:51, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and swapped the out the molasses analogy in favor of the cocktail party one. It's a better analogy IMHO, and the history of where it came from is pretty fascinating. Csmallw (talk) 02:41, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 8 July 2012

Extended content

It is mentioned that the term 'Higgs' has been taken from Peter Higgs, but no where it is mentioned that the term 'boson' has been taken from the surname of the Indian Bengalee physicist, Mr.Satyendra Nath Bose. Sayansinha (talk) 13:06, 8 July 2012 (UTC) N Not done and not likely to be done. It is mentioned, but you did not read the message that appeared when you posted your message. Please read it. CodeCat (talk) 13:38, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Yet another "Satyendra Bose" edit request - declined by another user, now collapsed. Please see archived section for past discussion and reasons. See also page notice for this page by User:HandThatFeeds. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:43, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

A particle behaving like Higgs

This is just a layman's question, but what is the difference between a new particle behaving like Higgs boson and, um, just a Higgs boson? If an animal is behaving like a duck, isn't it just a duck? It would be nice if someone knowledgable can clarify what still need to be verified. -- Taku (talk) 13:09, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

The article says "whose behaviour so far was consistent with a Higgs boson". I think you missed out the words in bold. So far the new particle acts like we'd expect a Higgs to act, but when it's tested at greater length (now we actually know it's confirmed to exist) it might or might not ultimately prove to be one. In simple terms it's had a number of properties verified, but not enough to confirm it is a Higgs boson.

That said I agree it would be nice to summarize what exactly is known about this particle, and what isn't. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:35, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

By the way The Economist leader flat out says that the Higgs has been found http://www.economist.com/node/21558254 Either they have inside info we don't, or they are being sloppy. Woz2 (talk) 15:30, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Very sloppy. This is plainly not true, "On July 4th physicists working in Geneva at CERN, the world’s biggest particle-physics laboratory, announced that they had found the Higgs boson." --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:05, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes. It also says "Without the Higgs there would be no mass." which seems to gloss over the fact that the proper mass of a composite particle can be finite even if the proper masses of its constituents are all zero (e.g. a glueball) But I digress... Woz2 (talk) 18:38, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Guys pleases take from this source http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/265088/Higgs-particle and it would help you a lot.--♥ Kkm010 ♥ ^{♪ Talk ♪} ߷ _{♀ Contribs ♀} 11:01, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer. But I'm concerned about WP:COPYVIO if we "take" from it. Thoughts? Woz2 (talk) 12:22, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It's not a copyright violation if you write your own text based on the information in the article. Only the text is copyrighted, the information is free to be used. CodeCat (talk) 12:46, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

That Britannica article actually contains quite a few errors/inaccuracies. (For example, the Higgs mechanism does not endow all elementary particle with mass. There are massless particles. Also at this point it is unclear how neutrinos get their mass, the Higgs mechanism may or may not be involved.) Nor does it seem vary accurate to refer to gauge bosons as subatomic particles.TR 21:31, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

In addition there are hypothetical particles with proper mass that definitely do not get their mass from the HM (assuming they exist, that is). glueballs Woz2 (talk) 22:41, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

But in defense of Britannica, those are not really elementary.TR 06:13, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, subatomic particle typically just means ‘particles smaller than atoms’, not necessarily ‘particles found in atoms’: for example strange baryons are often referred as such. (And there are (virtual) photons in atoms and (virtual) gluons in nuclei, to the extent that this statement makes sense – I know I'm using perturbative language in a non-perturbative context, but if you want to be that rigorous there actually aren't electrons in atoms either.) A. di M. (talk) 09:49, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for intruding but I just want to answer the question. The main reason the boson discovered is a Higgs Candidate is due to its decay channels being consistent with how the Higgs Boson should operate. For example, the 2 gamma ray photons could only come from a particle interacting with a massive charged particle in a 1-loop Feynman Diagram, In this case the Higgs interaction with a virtual W-Boson or Top-Quark Loop. The Higgs is neutral so the only way it could release 2 photons via an electromagnetic interaction is if it coupled to a charged, massive particle via the Higgs Mechanism itself. The Higgs couples to the most massive particles in the Standard Model, The Top Quark and the W and Z bosons. Since the W-Boson and Top Quark are charged photons are released, Since the Z-Boson is neutral it just decays into 2 Leptons. Since these channels were observed at ~5 femtobarns it is a Higgs Candidate. No Tau-Tau Channels were observed so it is probably not a ZZ or WW Boson. Also this boson fits into the expected production regieme from the LHC, namely Gluon-Gluon fusion. Why it is a low-mass Higgs is a job for theorists but it could be a singlet Higgs in the expected triplet that may be discovered when the LHC is up to full power in 2015 or it could be a Supersymmetric Higgs. In that case observation of the Higgs-> gamma-gamma cross section will yield the answer, we may have to wait untill 2015 though. MuonRay (talk) 19:36, 9 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by MuonRay (talk • contribs) 19:30, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

I just have to ask-- is there any chance of a ZZ boson interacting with Top quark? I mean a sort of ZZ Top interaction? Just to make Texas weep for not having the SCSC sited there? SBHarris 20:13, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, there could be a term in the La Grangian for that. A. di M. (talk) 14:37, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Hold the phone....

After all those discussions and warnings, how did this line make it to the lead? "The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs who, along with Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose and others, proposed the mechanism that suggested such a particle in 1964." That statement is completely not true - I will take the trouble of getting sources for that if anyone really demands. I'm taking it off for now. SPat ^talk 15:51, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting it. There is a high volume of misinformation floating around, causing this misperception to be added (and reverted) a bazillion times. Woz2 (talk) 18:41, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

THIS IS HIGHLY INCORRECT BECAUSE THE DISCOVERY OF CERN BEARS THE NAME OF SATYENDRA NATH BOSE. THIS FACT HAS BEEN REPORTED BY INDIAN NEWSPAPERS. PLEASE CORRECT THIS GRAVE ERROR.. US-Patel (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

No it doesn't, get your facts right first before demanding changes be made. See also the numerous other discussions on this talk page regarding this now rather tedious issue. Polyamorph (talk) 19:46, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

In addition, typing in all caps is the online equivalent of shouting in real life, and I consider it a violation of Wikipedia's policy of being civil. Also, please observe Wikipedia's guideline of assuming good faith. Also, you might want to read Bose's biography before you attempt to propagate sloppy reporting in the media further http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/21/116.full.pdf (the server seems to be slow but if you hit refresh a few times you should get the PDF). Hope this helps... Woz2 (talk) 22:27, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

<sarcasm>Yeah, newspapers are totally reliable when it comes to quantum field theory.</sarcasm> Facepalm A. di M. (talk) 23:46, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

This unmasked sarcasm, is it put on comment due to origin of those sources ? Otherwise arguing why thesis originated from people of central Asia origin is sarcastically flanked, while story originating from people of west Asia origin quite godly particulated ? This skew neutrality balance. The constructive proposition is to kick off the offending mass of the media section. 99.90.197.87 (talk) 08:25, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The whole ==Mainstream media== section is because according to Physic Noble laureate: "the God particle because the publisher wouldn't let us". Isn't it intriguing to find out who was this publisher and why k^ want this information to be deleted ? 99.90.197.87 (talk) 08:38, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Hey, I said “newspapers”, not “Indian newspapers”. A. di M. (talk) 09:34, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, wow. Just made a comment, only to see that one of my earlier comments is now the page notice for everyone who edits here. That's both flattering, and a little freaky. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:29, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

"unseen field permeates all of space"

The lede of the article contains the statement that the Higgs field is a "unseen field (that) permeates all of space". I know that phrases like this are extremely common in popular media descriptions of the Higgs field. However, that does not reduce the fact that this statement is completely vacuous. All (almost) fields are unseen and permeate all space. As such, the statement is misleading to readers (that don't know what a field is) since it suggests that it differentiates the Higgs from other fields.

The real information that this statement in the media is trying to convey is that the Higgs field (in its ground state) has a non-zero strength everywhere. I propose that we find a formulation that is both more accurate and more informative to a general audience.TR 06:01, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, in terms of the general reader, most fields are very finite in spatial dimension and filled with grass or AstroTurf. Darryl from Mars (talk) 06:34, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that a particular field ‘permeates’ a particular region of space if it vanishes there. But yeah, permeate is not a rigorous term anyway, so we'd better not use it. “... with a non-zero strength everywhere, even in otherwise empty space”? A. di M. (talk) 09:41, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

It has the huge advantage that it's accurate and comprehensible to a lay-reader, while not misleading a technical reader. In a subject this complex and a possible solution that speculatively proposes the existence of a new and undetected field, a little slippage in the introduction and a nod to the non-physicist may be useful. A technical reader is unlikely to be misled. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 16:26, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I like AdiM's suggestion. It accurately covers what is meant in a way that should be accessible to most readers. (much more than the vague "permeates all of spaces").TR 20:33, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Also A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.[5] It's interesting that Guth's "spectacular insight" in 1979 had the false vacuum Higgs field collapse responsible for cosmic inflation, and I think that this was part of Lederer's inspiration for calling it the God Particle. But we know now that the Higgs boson is not the inflaton. I think we really need an insufflationon, as some physicists are definitely blowing smoke you-know-where. My own suggestions for a really tough fundamental particle (hardon and futon) have been rejected. Like they rejected my idea for Wonderful and Marvelous for the last two quarks, which I thought would be handy in case supersymmetry turned out to be true. Drat. SBHarris 02:36, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The force is strong with this one... — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 20:18, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

But the Higgs has no colour charge! A. di M. (talk) 01:10, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I hate to point this out, but the Swonderful and the Smarvelous would both be bosons... so brace yourselves for a wave of nationalist cheerleading for the credit when they are discovered... ;-) Woz2 (talk) 02:13, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm really unhappy with the second of these sentences in the introduction:

The existence of the Higgs boson and the associated Higgs field would be the simplest of several methods to explain why some other elementary particles have mass. According to this theory, certain other elementary particles obtain mass by interacting with the Higgs field which has non-zero strength everywhere, even in otherwise empty space.

The problem is the 2nd sentence is poorly targeted. It introduces the "Higgs field" with no context, then says other particles hypothetically interact with this "Higgs field"... but what is this Higgs field? Basic context is absent. Readers don't necessarily need to know the field is "non-zero everywhere even in otherwise empty space". This doesn't help understand the Higgs boson or the search. Technical readers probably don't need details of the Higgs field in the introduction of this page either.

For the purposes of the Higgs boson introduction, this part of the intro needs to say two things: (1) According to SM a field exists everywhere [like many other fields] that we can't directly detect, and some particles obtain mass when they interact with it, (2) Although we can't directly detect that field, we can detect its related quantum which would prove whether or not the field exists and its properties.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:55, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. The fact that the Higgs field has a non-zero strength everywhere is the central property of the Higgs field that makes the mechanism work. It is this property that others are trying to get at when they say that the field "permeates all of space". Without this property, it is impossible to understand why interacting with this field would give particles mass all the time and everywhere.

Note that the Higgs fields is not "unseen". We are continuously detecting the Higgs field. Every time we see an electron with mass, we are detecting the Higgs field! (Similar to the way you detect an electrical field through its effect on observed charges.) This makes saying that the Higgs field is "unseen" untrue. The reason we need to detect the quantum of the field, is because a lack of the quantum would falsify the hypothesis that we are seeing the (effects of) the Higgs field through the observation of mass.TR 19:03, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Non-zero-strength is a central property of the field not the boson. In an introduction to the boson the field's properties are not pivotal. The non-zero-everywhere-ness of the Higgs field doesn't need to be in the lede to understand the concept of the boson and putting it there doesn't enhance understanding of the boson.FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The non-zero-strength of the field is central to understanding why the Higgs field gives mass, and therefore to understanding why the Higgs boson is important. (And also why the Higgs boson is rare, even though we see particles with mass all around us).TR 04:56, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

No. The non-zero-ness central to understanding how the field works, and the field is central to understanding mass and therefore why the boson matters. But the non-zero-ness is not central to understanding the boson. A is central to B, and B is central to C does not imply A is central to C. It's important in the body of the article; not in the intro. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:03, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I carefully stated: "According to SM a field exists everywhere [like many other fields] that we can't directly detect". Do you have a device to directly detect the Higgs field, or know of a theoretical way to build one? I doubt it. An electron isn't one, and we are not "continually detecting the Higgs field" by observing electrons. That's circular logic - proposing a Higgs field as one way (of several) to explain why electrons have mass, then arguing that seeing an "electron with mass" proves the field exists. The same logic would prove Technicolor, braid, or magical pixies as the reason.FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

An electron in a mass spectrometer would be a rather direct way of measuring the Higgs field strength. I could probably build one from an old CRT (although it would not be very accurate). This logic is not any more circular, than say that you detect the Earth's gravitational field by seeing an apple fall from a tree. Of course, such a measurement presumes that the field exists in the first place. "Proving" that requires the hypothesis to withstand further attempts at falsification. (such as detecting the excitations of the field).TR 04:56, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

You're presuming the very thing you set out to prove.

1. Once the Higgs mechanism is agreed to be produced by a Higgs field, and that Higgs field's free parameters are characterized so that we can directly know its strength from other measurements, then we can perhaps deduce its strength in various ways. But the baseline here is that the means of production is itself the point in question (sounds communist!) so showing that mass exists or any specific mass, is not proof of a specific generating method. At this point it's extremely circular.
2. Right now, the field itself isn't directly detectable. We instead have to detect its quanta. The position we're in is that we speculate an "electric field" exists, so we seek to prove it by seeing if we can create and prove the existence of "electrons" which theory says must exist if the field does, rather than directly detecting the effect of an electric field. Right now could we in principle measure the Higgs field itself at a point moment by moment by its effect on other particles, similar to the way we could measure variations in gravity or electric potential in or around a circuit? I think not.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 08:03, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Right now could we in principle measure the Higgs field itself at a point moment by moment by its effect on other particles, similar to the way we could measure variations in gravity or electric potential in or around a circuit? I think not. Then you think wrong. It is very simple to measure variations in the electron mass at a point over time, and therefore variations in the field strength of the Higgs (A simple oscilloscope will do the trick,) Of course, this is not a very useful experiment in trying to prove that the field actually exists, but it show that it is incredibly simple to measure the Higgs'field strength. (Note also that it is impossible to deduce the Higgs field strength from measuring the Higgs boson!)

Note that in your analogy with the electric field, it would be the photon that needed to be detected. However, we knew about the electric field long before we knew about photons (or EM waves for that matter).

Also note that this exactly the point that is confusing to many lay readers. "How come that a field that has such a huge effect everywhere, is undetectable?" The answer is, people saying that the field is undetectable are simply mistaken. (And confusing the lay reader in the process).TR 16:34, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, the mass of the electron is the value of the Higgs field times the Yukawa coupling between the Higgs field and the electron, so a measurement of the electron mass doesn't count as a measurement of the Higgs field unless you know the Yukawa coupling somehow else. A. di M. (talk) 09:35, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

But we do know the Yukawa coupling of the electron to the Higgs field, so the point is moot. Put even if you didn't, measuring the electron mass is a simple method of measuring hypothetical variations in the Higgs field in relative units. (Of course, in practice the Higgs field does not vary, in time or space, except for the very tiny variations caused be a rare Higgs boson event.) Point still stands, it is misleading to say that you cannot detect the Higgs field. (the detection is just rather boring because you are only going to see the rather featureless).TR 18:40, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

What? I thought the Yukawa coupling was measured by measuring the electron mass and dividing it by the Higgs vacuum expectation value (as computed from the Fermi coupling constant). Is there another way to measure it? (Anyway, we could say “directly detect” – yeah, if you take that too narrowly the only particles you can “directly” detect are the photons entering your eyes, the air molecules hitting your eardrum etc., but some indirect detections are more indirect than others.) A. di M. (talk) 23:02, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you have to measure the electron mass to get the Yukawa coupling, but you only have to do that once to "calibrate" your Higgs field measuring device. After that you device is set to measure the Higgs field at other locations and times. (With the boring result of measuring the same value over and over again because the Higgs field is in its groundstate.)TR 22:11, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Is "all of space" supposed to include/inply the center of the earth as well?165.212.189.187 (talk) 15:35, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Interesting question...I would assume so, yes. Darryl from Mars (talk) 15:40, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

“Interesting”? Why, what's so special about the centre of the Earth? A. di M. (talk) 16:13, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Not interesting as in 'interesting, I hadn't thought of that', interesting as in '...I bet you have a very interesting reason for asking that'. Darryl from Mars (talk) 16:22, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Try this: If you're so concerned with the "lay person's" understanding in the lede then most lay people (or just me) think all of space is "out there" and doesn't include objects like the planet earth.165.212.189.187 (talk) 17:04, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Good point. I was assuming that saying “even in otherwise empty space” (emphasis added) implies we're not talking only about otherwise empty space. How would you make that clearer? A. di M. (talk) 09:30, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

"in empty space and massive objects alike". Also does all of space include within black holes?165.212.189.187 (talk) 12:53, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Presumably yes, as black holes probably have inertia like any other massive object. CodeCat (talk) 12:58, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

or "permeates everything from empty space to black holes"165.212.189.187 (talk) 13:15, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

We know that either quantum field theory as we know it or general relativity as we know it (or both) break down in black holes, so I'd rather not use them as examples, until we have a decent theory of quantum gravity telling us what's going on in there. A. di M. (talk) 17:29, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Higgs-thingy

I stand by my comment - we do not need to describe the characteristics of the Higgs field in the introduction to the Higgs boson as this is detail on the field not the boson. It's useful to explain up front (1) SM solves the mass problem by positing a field such that particles interact with it and gain mass by doing so. (2) We can't directly detect this field but we can prove it exists and measure its properties indirectly by instead investigating whether its quantum particle exists. (3) This thereby shows whether SM is basically correct or not in this last area, which (4) is why the search matters. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 21:24, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

I disagree that it's circular logic. This is not an article demonstrating the existence of the Higgs boson, it's an entry describing "what it is" as a concept (as of today). There is no "assuming what's been set out to prove" issue, as it has already been assumed as a concept important enough to have a WP entry. It is then perfectly natural that this entry describes what its properties are "if it existed". Therefore, yes, detecting any mass means to measure the Higgs field, assuming it existed in the first place. This is what makes it different from "any" boson. But, would you not be detecting Technicolor? Yes, according to "that" concept. Which is not discussed in this entry. Gibbzmann (talk) 13:49, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Some of this agreed, some not. This is an article describing the Higgs boson, and the introduction is intended to summarize key points for readers. We do need to say it is the quantum of the field. We don't need to then explain the details of the Higgs field in the introduction to do that, any more than we explain details of the electromagnetic field in the introduction to electron. In fact the introduction to that article doesn't describe the characteristics of the EM field at all. Nor should we describe the characteristics of the Higgs field in the lede either. We just need to say it is a field that's believed to give rise to mass in some particles, and if correct, can be detected by detecting its boson. Everything else about the Higgs field belongs in the body or in the Higgs field article, and out of the lede. That is the point. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:29, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

You got the wrong particle there; I think you are looking for photon rather than electron. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:52, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

That's right, it is indeed the photon the particle you should have been looking at. And the photon is special in that it mediates the EM field, and this is stated in the lead of that article about the photon even though the EM radiation and EM force have articles of their own. The 'Higgs boson' is an article about the boson and not the field, that's right, but it is not an article about 'any' boson. As such, you ought to say what is special of THIS boson, and therefore of its field, and yes, even in the lead. Regardless, my previous comment targeted the presumpption that to include it in the lead would be to assume what is not demonstrated; which is not the case, because it is the very article that presumes the hypothetical existence of the Higgs boson (whcih indeed already exists for sure as a concept, or as a model, whatever). Gibbzmann (talk) 16:33, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

What seems clear to me is that, right now, '(intro to) Higgs Field', 'Higgs Boson' and 'Higgs Mechanism' are three increasingly technical takes on the same subject matter. If the announcement heat has died down a bit, then before we start hacking into leads here and there for the sake of article purity, maybe we should have a plan for organizing all this higg-business. Darryl from Mars (talk) 15:20, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Mainstream media

I'm not wild about "supposed neglect" as it seems to impart a POV but can't think of better wording. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:20, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Something along the lines of "mistakenly/erroneously/naivly/ reported that Satyendranath Bose deserved credit for the discovered particle". I'm not sure that helps! :) Polyamorph (talk) 17:48, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

What happens if they split it?

I mean, if it created the universe, then wouldn't splitting it theoretically blow up the universe? Seriously? I'm kind of worried. --86.141.99.56 (talk) 23:15, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Not particularly...especially since it's the field that gives things mass, the boson itself is just a slight ripple in the field. Darryl from Mars (talk) 23:36, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Atoms can be split because they are made out of smaller particles (protons and neutrons). But there is nothing so far that indicates any of the force carrying bosons, including presumably the Higgs boson once we find it, are made up of smaller particles. So the idea of 'splitting' it is meaningless, there's nothing to split it into. Also, it is not physically possible for something as small as a Higgs boson to blow up the universe. What gives atomic bombs their power is the fact that splitting the atoms inside the bomb fuel releases huge amounts of energy, because the smaller atoms that result are more stable and energetically 'happy' than the big uranium atoms they formed from. And when a lot of energy is lost, this is equivalent to a smaller amount of mass (0.1% of the total mass of each uranium atom split) according to Einstein's formula E=mc². Applying that same principle to the Higgs boson, for it to have enough energy contained within it to blow up the universe, it would need to have as much mass as a few galaxies. Which obviously isn't the case! CodeCat (talk) 00:42, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

That can't happen with the SM Higgs field, but see False vacuum. A. di M. (talk) 01:04, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Don't worry. The Higgs splits itself in something like 10^-26 seconds producing, typically, two bottom quarks, which themselves decay into mostly pions, which smack harmlessly into the detector. If the Higgs field itself collapsed, we'd be in trouble. However, any civilization with the power to do that has technology so godlike that it wouldn't be a problem. Law of Entropy (talk) 06:54, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

CERN did a detailed red-team blue-team study on this. See also Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray The earth has been bombarded with much higher energy collisions for billions of years, and the effects are only noticable in very sensitive experiments. You can also check here ;-) http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ Drive safely! Woz2 (talk) 11:03, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Just checking. --86.141.99.56 (talk) 16:41, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

You are welcome. Please continue to worry about pandemics from either a) human/chicken/pig co-habitation or b) accidental pathogen release from a biolab in a world with rapid, high-volume, global passenger air travel (see 12 Monkeys), and also weapons of mass destruction... but I digress. Woz2 (talk) 23:08, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

There. A. di M. (talk) 00:32, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I vociferously object to section 8.2 "The Fermi Paradox." Why is there no "Bose Paradox" also? Fermi is well known to be "the physicist with the most stuff named after him." It shows a clear bias. :-) Woz2 (talk) 01:49, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, if you count some 18th- and 19th-century mathematical physicists as physicists rather than (or as well as) mathematicians, I doubt that's the case. A. di M. (talk) 10:20, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Good point... but until just now Fermi level and Fermi surface were missing from Fermi (disambiguation)... Must be more out there... I've started List of things named after Enrico Fermi and have got my google-fu on to win the bet... Majorana fermion will not be added to the list. ;-) Woz2 (talk) 13:31, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

OK I think Gauss wins on number, but Fermi wins on variety (element, class of particles, one with name spelt backwards (imref),...) Cheers! Woz2 (talk) 16:35, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

On the true nature of 'fundamental-particles', and the Ultimately Real Entity.

All the fundamental-particles, starting from the quarks to Higg's boson, are currently believed by majority of scientists as 'real-things'. But, the fact that many fundamental-particles are very short-lived, decaying into different particles; and the fact that a particle, say an electron, and an anti-particle, say a positron, getting annihilated, leaving behind a pair of photons, imply that all elementary particles are 'process' or a 'phenomenon' of fluctuations generated in some still more fundamental real entity. Higg's field is believed to be present everywhere in the universe; it means that scientists have moved a step closer to religions, according to whom GOD is omni-present, all-pervading and eternal. Hasmukh K. Tank.122.102.125.40 (talk) 10:43, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

It's interesting how much of this comment is actually totally reasonable. It gets a little mystical at the end but...perhaps they should have been talking about the God Field, eh? Darryl from Mars (talk) 10:57, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

With one massive logical failure. "Higg's field is believed to be present everywhere in the universe; it means that scientists have moved a step closer to ____" Fill in the blank. That's the lapse. Science has believed for ages that there may be "somethings" that exist in all places. Look at other fields and structures. To select "god" from all of those possible "exists in all places" candidates, and then to populate god with your own personal concept of that term, along with whatever beliefs your own religion has about "god" such as good or bad, judgment, bible, vedas, quoran, etc... that is the lapse. Stating that "science agrees there are some things that exist in all places" is nothing like saying "science has moved closer to god". Science has had that understanding, or been open to that understanding, for centuries, and philosophers for millennia. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:53, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

O.K., Let us not give any specific name to 'that which exists everywhere'. The other point is: that elementary-particles may not be the 'things' or 'real-entities'; they seem to be just 'patterns' of 'fluctuations' or 'vibrations' generated in 'that which exists everywhere'. Hasmukh K. Tank — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.102.125.40 (talk) 12:18, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Physicists tend to assume the laws of nature are the same everywhere, i.e. they 'exist everywhere'. I do not think that idea is something particularly new in science. Religious people tend to pick the facts that agree with their world-view but ignore those that disagree.85.230.137.182 (talk) 13:31, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

All very interesting, but let us please remember this talk page is NOT for discussions about the topic in general, it is for discussions of specific changes to the article. This is not a discussion forum, regardless of how interesting and civil the discussion.204.65.34.34 (talk) 14:50, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

What, this isn't Facebook? :-) I think we should point 122.102.125.40 over to Pantheism Cheers! Woz2 (talk) 16:53, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

See also Holomovement, Implicate order, and David Bohm's description of the implicate order: "[…] what we call empty space contains an immense background of energy and […] matter as we know it is a small quantized wavelike excitation on top of this background, rather like a tiny ripple on a vast sea". Whether there's a link between the implicate order and the Higgs boson or not, beyond the similarity of words and ideas, I wouldn't yet know. --Chris Howard (talk) 19:04, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

As for stuff that's everywhere... A. di M. (talk) 09:38, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

And one more that's even more basic Field (physics): "In physics, a field is a physical quantity associated with each point of spacetime." Woz2 (talk) 11:28, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Mathematically yeah; but when normal people talk about there being a (say) magnetic field in some region of space, they normally mean that there's a non-zero (or even a non-negligible) magnetic field there. A. di M. (talk) 12:24, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Tevatron and LEP

If the new boson only has a mass of 125-127 GeV why did not the Tevatron or LEP find it? 85.230.137.182 (talk) 13:21, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

LEP was able to exclude a Higgs with masses up to about 115 GeV, so that was bad luck. The last analysis of Tevatron data did show a 2.9 sigma excess at 126 GeV, so it's just that they would have needed more statistics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by A. di M. (talk • contribs) 14:07, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

LEP wasn't powerful enough. Although the Tevatron was powerful enough the problem was that 125GeV Higgs decays mostly into b anti-b pairs which produce a large hadronic shower so hard to distinguish. If the Higgs had a higher mass then it would primally decay via a W W pair which is a lot easier to "see". So the Tevatron was able to rule out this higher mass range. This leaves the question why the LHC saw a signal and the Tevatron didn't. The reason is that although it is hard to see b anti-b pairs at low energy the Higgs also decay into two photons which is a lot cleaner signal to see however the Higgs only decays ~0.001 times for every b anti-b decay. So it's a matter of statistics.Dja1979 (talk) 16:30, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Kaluza-Klein theory

Could the just-discovered Higgs Boson and the radion of Kaluza-Klein theory possibly be one and the same? Or is it possible that they mix and what was observed at LHC was a superposition of the two? 70.99.104.234 (talk) 19:49, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Intro edit - eyeballs?

Any chance of eyeballs on this edit I made [6]? I've tried to put the explanation of the particle first, then the explanation of its name. I really wanted to link two sentences or reduce repetition, but couldn't find a good way to do so. Best I have as an alternative so far is:

"The existence of a Higgs field and its associated Higgs boson would be the simplest of several ways to explain how certain elementary particles have mass. The Standard Model says these particles gain mass by interacting with the Higgs field, which has non-zero strength everywhere, even in otherwise empty space."

Not really brilliant prose. Improvements? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 09:54, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Readable sources (for laymen) about the connection between Higgs field and Higgs boson are:

• Flip Tanedo: Who ate the Higgs?; Helicity, Chirality, Mass, and the Higgs
• Matt Strassler: The Higgs FAQ 1.0; The Standard Model Higgs

Maybe something could be used to simplify or better formulate the introductory parts. --D.H (talk) 10:05, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

That's the best formulation/prose I've seen so far for the lead. Well done. Dickdock (talk) 11:47, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

The intro has developed an error: "The Higgs mechanism is the simplest of several proposed ways to explain why certain other elementary particles have mass". That's incorrect. The Higgs mechanism is essentially considered confirmed; the question then is what causes the mechanism to happen. It's the Higgs field and its related force carrier that is the correct subject of the clause "is the simplest of several proposed ways to explain" how that mechanism is realized. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:52, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, "force carriers" usually refers to the spin-1 bosons that mediate the gauge interactions (i.e. W, Z, photon and gluon). I've never seen the Higgs boson referred to in that way. Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:36, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Why do physicists dislike the God Particle?

Currently, the introduction states:

Although the proposed particle is both important and elusive, the epithet is strongly disliked by physicists, who regard it as misleading exaggeration[10][11] since the crucial focus of study is to learn about the Higgs field - the boson is a means to that end - and because the field rather than the boson theoretically gives mass to some other particles.

I am really unconvinced by the explanation since the crucial focus..., which sounds as if the reason why physicists dislike the epithet was that it does not do justice to the distinction between Higgs boson and Higgs field. I don't think this is the case: as both references 10 and (especially) 11 make clear, the main reason why physicists don't like the name is that it lends religious overtones to a subject that has nothing to do with God. Unless somebody can provide sources in support of the current explanation of the dislike, I would be inclined to remove it. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:26, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

What's missing is the "religious overtones" sense (the implication that "this is the pivotal and mystical particle that if it exists, explains all"). The rest is valid, but this aspect is not present at all, and should be made clear. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure that "the rest is valid". The way the sentence is written now, it almost sounds as if "God field" would be ok whereas "God particle" is not ok. The distinction between field and particle is important elsewhere in the lead, but it is not the reason why physicists dislike the nickname (this appears to be just an interpretation of yours which is not supported by the references). Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:58, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Tried to fix this. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:40, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

I am missing my copy of Lederman's book The God Particle that started all this. It's a very good book, however, and I recommend it. But let us remember that it was written in 1992 or so when there was a real possibility that the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) would be cancelled in Texas (as eventually it indeed was), and the book was written in part to raise popular awareness of the physics that the SSC was supposed to produce, which was (of course) the Higgs. Lederman's later comment that he wanted to call it the "godamn particle" should be taken in light of Lederman's sense of humor and playfulness. He's a raconteur if nothing else, and not beyond re-spinning this. Originally the book argued for finding Higgs as a way that the common US taxpayer (most of whom are religous) could make a connection with the ways of God-- by paying for the SSC!

As I remember, in Lederman's book this included not only an argument about the fundamental particles and their mass, but also the Higgs' role in the inflation of the early universe, as originally postulated by Guth in 1980. So Higgs would have had a major role in explaining creation, too. That's god-like. In 1992 (the book published in 1993) I'm not sure it had yet been determined that the Higgs field could not have caused Guth's inflation, as Guth originally had suggested in 1980 that it had. So THAT 1992 reason for calling Higgs "The God Particle" has (by now) been forgotten. Somebody is going to have to read Lederman's book to see (again, my copy is on loan to somebody). However, it's highly referenable, since Lederman is the guy who is to blame for this term. But the Higgs boson's supposed role in cosmic inflation, plus Lederman's desire to have Believers pay for the SSC, surely both played a role in his choice of a moniker for the thing. And those facts should go in Wikipedia. SBHarris 17:33, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Is the "overview" section redundant?

The Overview section currently essentially duplicates the content of the lede. This seems rather redundant, especially since it is also followed by a "general description" section. Should we just get rid of it?TR 10:37, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

I was about to propose the same. I'll remove it now and see if anybody objects. Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:20, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

(a bit late maybe) No objection, I think we're working out how to explain the Higgs to lay-people finally, but the section did have some useful wordings and explanations, rather than just delete I'd like to see them folded into the rest or merged, so we get the best of all that is in it. Was going to, but a long "to do" list here. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:41, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Higgs confusion redux

There's way too much confusion between the Higgs mechanism (considered confirmed but origins unknown) and the Higgs field (speculative, leading explanation of several, tentatively proven by demonstrating the existence of its quantum).

There's also confusion (fueled by media) over the role of the field and the boson, whose actual significance seems to be - (a) proves the field and hence the origins of the mechanism, (b) thus proves core standard model or discriminates between valid and invalid models, and (c) once we know more about the field/mechanism there's considerable potential for "new physics" in theory and experiment which can't be accessed until this area is clearer.

It also seems to be more correct that it's the field that gives mass to some particles rather than the boson (still often misunderstood), and the more profound significance of the boson at present is because it a window onto the field and mechanism, and to validate, test or obtain relevant data for these areas of SM and other advanced theories.

I've edited the intro to try and put this in a logical order that makes these a bit clearer:

The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is a proposed elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. The Higgs boson's existence would have profound importance in particle physics because it would prove the existence of the hypothetical Higgs field - the simplest and most favoured of several proposed ways to explain the origin of the symmetry breaking mechanism known to cause some particles to have mass. Confirmation of the answer to this question is likely to greatly affect human understanding of the universe, indicate which of several current particle physics theories are more likely correct, and open up "new" physics beyond current theories. The leading explanation is that these particles acquire mass by interacting with a Higgs field, which has non-zero strength everywhere, even in otherwise empty space. If this theory is true, a matching boson—the smallest possible excitation of the Higgs field—should also exist and be detectable, providing a crucial test of the theory.

Advantages -

• Acknowledges the importance of HB but immediately says why - because it proves the field - and is more explicit why the field matters
• Makes clear the mechanism is confirmed and its relationship to the field
• Makes clear field not boson gives mass etc
• Touches on the impact such knowledge would have (as above), which explains the hype and why seen as pivotal and such effort put in.
• Says up front how these all relate and what physicists seek to learn, avoids problem of later refocusing significance from boson (which public believes is important) to field and mechanism.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 01:31, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I generally like this. In this order it reads much better for a general reader. Some concerns:

• ... and most favoured Although this is probably true. It is a hard statement to source, and it also borderlines on being POV. Since it does not add much for the lay reader, I think it may be safer to omit it.
• the origin of the symmetry-breaking mechanism I fear that this may be a bit jargony for lay readers, who typically do not know what a symmetry is, let alone what symmetry breaking is.

TR 16:53, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Another remark. Something that generally in the technical literature the term "Higgs boson" can refer to both the field and the particle depending on context. This rather habit goes for all quantum fields, for example "W boson" can refer to either the W gauge field or its quantum. Typically, this does not cause much of problem (because real world occurances of these fields are easily interpreted as superpositions of the particle excitations (possibly including some virtual particles) over a featureless groundstate. This habit is also reflect by the fact that we do not have separate articles for quark and quark field, etc.

The problem with the Higgs is that its ground state (which cannot be expressed as a sum of particle states) is not featureless but plays in important role in the phenomenology of the Higgs. Requiring us to separate the two concepts. Nonetheless, readers may get confused do to the use of language else where.

I am not yet sure what to do about this, but I think we should all be aware of this. One thing we may want to think about is whether we really want separate Higgs boson and Higgs field articles. In the end, it may be easier to treat both in one article like we do with quark.TR 09:29, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Rename as Higgs field and boson? While that would not be many users' expectation, it would probably be okay once they get over the slight surprise. Or keep as 2 separate articles and cross-link with subsections on each.

As for "most favored" I'd be happy to cite it just from the fact that it is the Higgs field/boson that's incorporated into SM and not some other theory. Also, not trivially, the Higgs field/boson has had a $bn's facility set up to test it first, not some other theory, which strongly suggests it's seen as the most likely or most important one to test initially, with other theories as fallback. That also seems to confirm a preference by physicists for this model of the Higgs Mechanism origins. There's probably some discussion of this in the LHC founding documents, or books on the SM or Higgs. It might take some digging, but I'm fairly sure we can solve the citing issue. So I think it is going to be citeable (which is Wikipedia's criterion). We just have to figure how best to do so. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 11:24, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The main question is what does the "favoured" add information wise? As for being true, I think a couple a years ago, a multi Higgs scenario as in the MSSM may have been more favoured, theoretically. (Arguments constraining the Higgs mass mostly work for the lightest Higgs in a multi Higgs model as well, and the LHC was build to determine the exact nature of the electroweak symmetry breaking in nature.) The only really sense it which the single Higgs model is favoured is because it is the simplest, which we already say.

So again I think it can be safely dropped, avoiding the subjectiveness of the statement.TR 11:42, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The question it raises is "If there are several explanations, why the huge long-term experimental focus on this one and not the others, as it seems?" (If we say it's because HF/HB are in the SM and other theories for the HM aren't in SM, then that begs the question why those are in SM and others not.) In other words, its value is to answer the reader, why all this focus on testing one specific explanation (or one set of connected explanations for multi-higgs) involving a field and boson/s, if that isn't a specially preferable theory to test first or there aren't special reasons to favor it over others.

As it stands, the Higgs field concept is in SM and its extensions and other theories are not in SM, which tends to suggest physicists prefer the Higgs field concept at present and want to test it first, enough to be worth the effort we've seen to detect the Higgs field's quantum (rather than setting up very high energy experiments to prove other theories). So yes, I would say the Higgs field/boson concept is demonstrably the preferred or leading theory to explain the mechanism, at present. Would you disagree, or are you more concerned about citeability of the statement? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:15, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

(ec)We already, give the answer to that question: it is the simplest. Many of the other mechanisms involving more complicated Higgs sectors (such as the MSSM or technicolor), effectively reduce to a description with a single scalar field in some limit. However, there is no experimental evidence that favours the single Higgs model. Theoretical considerations (most prominently the hierarchy problem) strongly suggest that the single Higgs field explanation cannot be correct. This BTW is the real reason so much resources have been committed to the LHC. We know something is off about the single Higgs explanation in the SM, but we need experimental input to determine what possible way of fixing this nature uses.TR 12:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

"Simplest" doesn't provide a reason at all. Generally we focus on and test things because they are believed most revealing, or most likely to take us forward or be correct, or most likely to provide important data, indifferent whether "simple" or not. The easiest explanation why we're searching for the Higgs boson/s first, given a $10bn or so outlay, is that the HB/s is/are preferrable to search for first. Whether it turns out to be basic SM or supersymmetrical multi-Higgs, the reason we're testing is that the basic concept of a Higgs field/boson(s) and the basic framework of SM with or without extensions, is the leading theory compared to all Higgsless models, at present, and is embedded into SM. The reason is that the Higgs field concept is the leading theory, even if we don't know whether it will prove single or multi boson or which extension to SM (if any) it will favor.

We can probably show this by citation. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I can cite you sources which contradict the single Higgs being most favoured. For example, the Peskin&Schroeder textbook (one of the most used graduate texts for QFT) states (on page 788): "... This (TR: i.e. EWSB) might be supplied by the vacuum expectation value of a scalar field, or by the more complicated dynamics of a new sector of particles. At this moment, we do not know which hypothesis is preferred." This quite clearly states no particular favor either way, which is still the impression I get from my colleagues working on this.

The misconception that you seem to be working from is that the LHC was build only to test the single Higgs hypothesis. This is not the case, the LHC was designed to test the way electroweak symmetry is broken. Basically, all alternative models predict that something most be observable in at the TeV scale. And many predict at least one scalar particle (sometimes elementary, othertimes composite).TR 13:05, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate the courtesy of the dialog. I think the misunderstanding is that I see the leading theory as (one or many) Higgs particles and a Higgs field, whether SM or some multi-Higgs extension to SM). When I say the Higgs field is the "favored" or "leading" theory, I don't mean to imply a single-Higgs model, but rather any of the family of models that posits a Higgs field, one or more Higgs bosons, and is compatible with SM or its extensions. You perhaps read my use of the word as meaning that a single-Higgs model is what is "favored", but that's not what I meant or wrote. I was quite careful:

"...it would prove the existence of the hypothetical Higgs field - the ... most favoured of several proposed explanations of [symmetry breaking]..."

"...The leading explanation is that these particles acquire mass by interacting with the Higgs field..."

In other words I've been careful to make clear in writing, that a Higgs field's existence (and some number of bosons but not specified) is what is favored and the leading theory, compared to all theories that don't assert a Higgs field or bosons. I think therefore we're saying the same thing? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:50, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Multi higgs bosons also means multiple Higgs fields! (one for every boson)TR 14:14, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Worth noting but not noted! FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:20, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

A general part of the philosophy of science (which most working scientists follow in some sense even if they've never studied the philosophy of science per se), is Occam's razor, which in science asks that hypotheses or theories be minimalist-- as constrained by observation and their fit with other accepted theories. "A theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler!" as Einstein put it (and indeed, general relativity is actually mathematically the simplest theory of gravity which is consistent with the constraints of a quasi-Newtonian force, plus special relativity).

The reason for this meta-principle, is that it's always easy to make a theory more complicated by adding epicycles-- or new dimensions or new particles-- to explain something, or make something "pretty" (i.e., mechanistically or mathematically simple). For an especially poignant example of this problem in physics, see supersymmetry, a theory that *doubles* the number of particles that are "supposed to" exist in nature for aesthetic theoretic reasons, even though (unfortunately) not a single one of these extra particles has ever been detected! Scientists don't always follow Occam's razor because it's hard to define "simplicity." Does that refer to the mechanism, the math, or the predicted observables? Supersymmetry people would prefer a theory with "simple" underlying mechanisms, at the expense of a lot more messy complicated observables (those extra particles) that are not seen right now.

So also it is with Higgs and his particle(s). Do there exist these massive scalar boson thingies that act to break the (otherwise perfect) symmetry between massive and massless force bosons? Previously, the question was: do there even exist ANY of these things? (The observational answer, just now "in," is that, yes, thank god, there is at least one). But what reason do we now have to posit additional ones? This article should probably address that question in a paragraph or two. Note from the quotes above that messy theories with many unseen types of particles that serve no purpose but symmetry aesthetics "bother" some theorists more than they do others. That's a matter of pure taste, since observation always has limits and places to hide postulated entities. All that is one of the debates at the heart of string theory. SBHarris 17:17, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

News and reliable sources

Currently the article contains quite a few citations to news sources. Considering the number of factual errors typically contained in those reports, I do not think that they can be considered as reliable sources for this article. (Especially, since journalists writing those stories may very well be using wikipedia for part of their information!) I think that most of these should be replaced with higher quality sources. Some exceptions may exist, such as newspaper columns by notable physicists.TR 09:37, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. That's the second bullet in WP:NEWSORG, BTW. A. di M. (talk) 12:12, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Agree also, with the caveat that quite a few non-contentious and non-technical points are not so much of a problem. However reports where a reader reasonably expects technical accuracy should be high quality sources. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 12:27, 17 July 2012 (UTC)