Higgs

Lorena M. Ramos Oyola

How does matter acquires its mass? Many of us just think that the mass of an object comes obligatorily with it, taking to account maybe its size or the materials of which it is formed, or at least that is what I thought until I found this interesting yet awesome article about the Higgs boson. The article “LHC cements Higgs Boson Identification”, posted by BBC NEWS in the  Science & Environment  section, informs us about a particle found  in July, 2012, which had amazed many of the scientists (for not saying all of them) for its peculiar similarity to the long-searched  and researched particle – The Higgs boson-. The LHC, Large Hadron Collider, is an International project –actually a machine- that lies beneath the Swiss/French border at Geneva, leaded by the European Organization for Nuclear Research –“CERN”  derived from the acronym for the French “Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire”-, was what confirmed the discovery. 

This “super particle”, as we may call it because of its characteristics,  stands for a fundamental particle that gives or assigns mass to matter… How? Well it is thought that the particles which have direct contact or direct interaction with the Higgs particle are the ones that acquire mass, the ones that do not have this kind of contact do not acquire mass. Therefore, being a “central component” of the Standard Model of particle physics; a theory that defines the relationships between the forces of the universe, meaning the different nuclear interactions and dynamics of the subatomic particles. Which basically explains how the universe is put together and how it functions by letting us acknowledge and understand what is really happening from the inside of matter –the particles or atoms-. Thus, meaning a huge importance or advance on Science and its development and improvements.  Although there are still some doubts and uncertainty about whether the discovery is in fact a Higgs boson or not, there are some facts that lead the scientists into classifying it as  a “Higgs–like”.  A reason for this is that, even though a much fuller analysis is needed, after some experimentation it has been known that the particle found has  a “spin” equal to zero, which makes it highly accurate to think it is actually a Higgs, since no other particle –at least an elementary particle- has “spin” zero instead of a Higgs boson. It will also be needed to verify which type of Higgs it is, to see if it is the one compatible with the Standard Model, once it is completely confirmed to be this amazing and so important particle.  

Personally, I think this is an amazing and helpful progress towards the knowledge of the behavior of particles, since it can be the first “physically” known -not just assumed of its existence-, it can be more profoundly explored. Therefore, we can all learn more about it. Hence, with more knowledge we could even be able of manipulating it in our favor, and with it we could have some kind of control over the interactions of these particles. Consequently, have control over mass, or interaction of mass… I bet we could! There’s no limit on imagination and knowledge!