The ‘God’ Particle
By Dr Zafar M. Iqbal
Chicago, IL
I k now nothing about particle physics but, thanks to the media fanfare last week, I did hear that the Higgs boson, named after Peter Higgs, a University of Edinburgh physicist (or the so-called ‘God’ particle), a sub-atomic particle that cannot be seen by the naked eye has now been ‘found’ to exist. Ever since Higgs proposed its existence in 1964, it had been very elusive but now the scientists claim finding it with over-99.99% confidence.
That it was ‘found’, not by an American effort but by the multinational European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) headquartered near Geneva, Switzerland and by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile underground particle accelerator on the Swiss-French border that, by high-speed smashing of sub-atomic particles, generated the needed evidence are matters I would return to later. Additionally, it has had significant Indo-Pak input.
Don’t expect me to go into hardcore physics here (alien territory for me) but there are some facts that might interest some readers.
The term ‘Boson’ was coined by a famous physics Nobelist, Paul A. M. Dirac, after the Indian physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974), because these sub-atomic particles follow the Bose-Einstein statistics. Incidentally, Dirac was also the subject of a 2009 book, “The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom” by Graham Farmelo. In addition to being ‘strange’, this genius was also very taciturn, and to underscore this quality, someone even came up with the ‘Dirac Unit’, which was supposed to be equivalent to one word uttered in an hour.
Since Higgs boson was so hard to find, some theoretical physicists have said that it is something that “does not want to be found.” That it is also called the ‘God’ particle points to another story about its elusive history. Leon Lederman, another Nobel physicist and former Director of the Fermi Lab (Batavia, IL) wanted to call it the ‘goddamn’ particle but his editors had to shorten it to be appropriate.
Higgs boson, if the manifestation is confirmed, would be the last force missing so far in The Standard Model of particle physics, a set of equations that formed the law of cosmos 35 years ago. This model has four basic constituents: electromagnetism; the ‘strong’ force that holds the nucleus in the atom, the ‘weak’ force that represents radioactive decay; the last is gravity (which the Higg’s boson may now be able to explain). Solidification of the model included work of Dr. Abdus Salam of Pakistan who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize with Steven Weinberg (US) and proposed the 1974 Pati-Salam model (Grand Unification Theory, GUT) with an Indian physicist, Yogesh Pati. This model also predicts the existence of a weak interaction with heavy ‘W’ and ‘Z’ boson.
The Higg’s boson represents an invisible force that fills the space like molasses and “imbues” mass to elementary particles, and indicates diversity in nature. It could lead the scientists into explaining, for instance, matter, anti-matter, dark matter, and the most mysterious dark energy that gives the galaxies needed “gravitational scaffolding.” Dark matter and dark energy make up 96% of our entire universe; all we see is just the remaining fraction (4%).
Reports show how since December 2011, two independent research teams who run particles at CERN’s collider, found “promising bumps” in their data (a signal suggesting something ‘new’, possibly Higg’s boson) at mass around 125 billion electron volts. [For comparison, the mass of a proton is about a billion EV, and an electron, about a million EV]. Scientists at the Fermi Lab acknowledged that they missed the elusive particle though they had seen data similar to CERN’s.
Stephen Hawking, director of research at the University of Cambridge’s Center for Theoretical Cosmology, had doubts if Higg’s boson will ever be found. He even had bet a decade ago with Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan. “It seems I have just lost $100,” Hawking told BBC, adding that Higgs now deserves a Nobel. It seems about a thousand scientists and others waited all night to get into the CERN auditorium which seemed to have “a rock concept ambience,” and Higgs entered the meeting to a sustained applause. Announcing the discovery, CERN’s Director Rolf Heuer said, “As a layman, I think we have it …. But as a scientist, I have to say, ‘What do we have?’”
Until the existence of an invisible particle is confirmed, we may have to be content with the “approximation of the truth’, at best. This also reminds us of Stephen Dedalus (alter-ego of Joyce in ‘Ulysses’) saying to himself you are “almosting it.” Jim Holt also noted it in a review of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World,” by Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist.
Sub-atomic particles have also infiltrated into the culture: both CERN and anti-matter vials are featured in Dan Brown’s book ‘Angels and Demons’, in which attempts are made to destroy the Vatican. It was made into a movie in 2009, as was its predecessor ‘The Da Vince code’ earlier. Higgs appeared in a 2011 “Nova” special by Brian Greene, describing the enormous difficulty in finding it.
This CERN announcement, made at CERN’s headquarters (Geneva, Switzerland) on our Independence Day, has brought out the irony of how the US budget cuts and other problems are now affecting our leading status in science and technology. Congress abandoned the Superconducting Super Collider that was to be built in Waxahachie, Texas, some 20 years ago. That collider, some scientists have said since, would have been larger and more powerful than CERN’s, and could have found the Higg’s boson and several others. We know, however, that over 100,000 scientists from 100 countries took part in the CERN effort, including nearly 2,000 Americans, with the biggest and high-placed group from California.
In the US budget, cuts in science and technology areas are now wide-spread and deep. Not just disappointing but many scientists think that talent is now moving away from the US for these reasons. This may be reminiscent of the exodus of some scientists when President George Bush put severe restrictions on stem-cell research some years ago. If this trend continues, expensive projects will have to rely on international support, in which US scientists may not be the sole players as has been the case for decades, but will continue to play a significant role in big and expensive multinational projects.
Eik hi zur-ray per naheen,
zur-ray, zur-ray per hai ooska naam
zur-ray, zur-ray may maujoodh hai wo
aasmaan-awn main hi nahin,
kithab-awn may hi nahin,
musjid-awn may hi nahin ---
nazar kay saam-nay hai wo,
dhoondnay ki zaro-ruth nahin.
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