"The key fact about the Higgs boson is that it is the origin of the masses of all known massive elementary particles, including the quarks, leptons, and W and Z bosons. That raises the following question: Why is a new particle needed to give other particles mass? An audience of physicists can understand the answer: Detailed experiments on the weak interactions establish that the Hamiltonian governing elementary particles has exact symmetries that forbid quark, lepton, and boson mass terms. Thus those symmetries must be spontaneously broken. That, in turn, requires a new field to provide the order parameter for the symmetry breaking. Those familiar with contemporary physics will recognize each step in the above argument. But for nonscientists, every step brings in new, technical, and difficult concepts. It is an unsolved problem to present this argument in popular language."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Michael Peskin,
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Higgs boson
12 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Higgs boson →
Related Quotes
"At the heart of the Higgs physics programme is the question of how the Higgs boson couples to Standard Model elementa…"
"The discovery ... of the Higgs boson will mark a watershed in particle physics. In the future, the calendar of partic…"
"... the famous particle bears the name of Peter Higgs alone. Over the years, all the prestigious prizes in physics ha…"
"In regards to the mechanism, Brout and Englert make some comments, but give no quantitative argument. In the Higgs PR…"
"... string theory seems to require our world to have a property called supersymmetry. And a supersymmetric Standard M…"
"... inclusion of the Higgs boson into the unified electroweak theory guaranteed that one could perform finite calcula…"
"Higgs, 84, shares the 8m Swedish kronor (£775,000) prize – and no shortage of kudos – with François Englert at the Fr…"
"... one of the consequences of the electroweak symmetry is that, if nothing new is added to the theory, all elementar…"
"There is a puzzle about the Higgs particle — which is what makes it relatively light compared to the natural mass sca…"
"Armed with the most advanced mathematics and a good dose of imagination, a generation of theoretical physicists conce…"