The Hunt for the Higgs Boson

Development of galaxies, planets, etc. Inflation Big Bang Ve Vu V Z First stars (about 400 million years) - Age of universe- ΑΛΙ O THE BIG BANG 2 FUNDAMENTAL PARTICLES Almost 14 billion years ago, scientists say, space exploded. The universe has been cooling and expanding ever since. So if you look back in time, the universe gets denser, hotter and simpler. Knowledge about these particles is not enough to understand how everything around Us operates. The Standard Model of physics allows us to calculate and explain why particles interact the way they do. A more interesting particle slowed down by more Higgs particles, giving it mass- CMS ALICE LHC ATLAS LHCЬ 11 Higgs particles 27 km ® THE HIGGS PARTICLE O THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER There's just one catch: The Standard Model assumes the existence of the Higgs particle, which has yet to be discovered (although Tuesday's announcement suggests we're close), In theory, the universe is full of something called the Higgs field, which gives fundamental particles mass by interacting with them. Much like guests at a party, more interesting particles experience more difficulty passing fhrough due to increased interaction, while less interesting particles can pass through much faster. The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is the instrument that scientists have used to find the Higgs. The LHC takes the part of an atom called a proton, accelerates it to nearly the speed of light, and smashes it against other protons to re-create the condítions that existed just after the Big Bang. As a result, new particles are generated in four detectors designed to record their direction and energy. MATTHEW BAMBACH/THE GLOBE AND MAL X SOURCES: GRAPHIC NEWS, BRIAN COX TED TALK; MCHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY ATLAS PLANETARLIM SHOW, NASA/WMAP SCIENCE TEAM ERadius of observable universe modern universe (13.7 billion years)