A proton-proton collision event in the CMS experiment producing two
high-energy photons (red towers). This is what we would expect to see
from the decay of a Higgs boson but it is also consistent with
background Standard Model physics processes. © CERN 2012
Not quite ignorance this one, but you could put it in the weird category. Earlier today, at a CERN press conference, they announced the discovery of a new particle, which may very well be the Higgs Boson I'm sure you've all heard about. Here, I attempt to explain simply what exactly the Higgs Boson is.
Download mp3 here
If you want to know more about particle physics and the standard model, I can recommend this website which does a very good j-b of explaining things pretty simply. The Particle Adventure.
Transcript:
All we know of how the universe w--ks if underpinned by what we call the Standard Model of particle physics consisting of the fundamental particles and forces that make up everything we know, fundamental being the smallest particle everything else can be divided into. An atom will divide into electrons, neutrons, and protons. Protons and neutrons will divide into quarks, of which there are six varieties. Up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charm. There's the four forces too, strong nuclear force, nuclear weak force, electromagnetic, and the weakest of the four - gravity. There are other particles than those I've mentioned too. Unfortunately, this by itself indicates that everything will fly around at the speed of light and not interact with each other. It was theorised that a field exists throughout all the universe, what we call the higgs field, that slows them all down and creates mass. The way it works is like a pool of water, larger objects experience more resistance when moving through, which slows them down. In the same way, different particles experience more resistance than others moving through the higgs field, this resistance determining the particle's mass. In accordance with the conservation of energy, as the particles experience resistance, energy is converted and a higgs boson is released from the higgs field which immediately decays into other particles. The detectors at CERN are looking for these telltale decays, which is what they've found. A new particle that appears to behave as the Higgs particle is expected to. Further experiments are required to verify if it actually is a Higgs boson or something similar
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