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The Higgs Boson

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The Higgs Boson
Jordan Bihms
The Higgs Boson

Jeffrey Kluger, senior writer at TIME magazine said that “It is not often that the world stops, cheers and generally goes nuts over a new discovery in particle physics.” On July 4th of 2012, employees at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, rushed out to tell of the news that the Higgs Boson might have been located. The Higgs Boson, named after Peter Higgs, is said to be what gives atoms in the universe their mass, which in itself is a huge step forward in understanding everything around us. This new discovery could be ranked within the top 50 scientific advances in the history of the world. With it, the existence of the long sought after would be confirmed. Even if it is not found, but is an entirely new particle, this will allow a new phase of findings and innovations for years to come.

To understand the Higgs Boson you must first understand the Standard Model. The Standard Model of particle physics plays a big part in nuclear interaction and subatomic particles, basically how the universe works. It is the simplest set of elements, the elementary particles, required to create world as we see today. Our interpretations though only show us that the model sheds light on only four percent of the energy seen in the universe. The other ninety six percent contain dark energy of seventy two percent and dark matter of twenty three percent. But it is still a very effective device in other fields of the theory. The Standard Model explains the fundamentals pertaining how elementary particles and forces of electromagnetism, the strong, and the weak forces interact in the universe. The electromagnetic force in the theory is what has an effect on any particle that has an electrical charge. The weak force allows for decay, such as making a neutron transform into a proton, and the strong force allows for a nucleus to be held together. This is made up of seventeen different particles, the Higgs Boson among these, in two

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