Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Higgs has been awarded a number of awards in recognition of his work,
including the Dirac Medal and Prize for outstanding contributions to
theoretical physics from the Institute of Physics, the 1997 High Energy
and Particle Physics Prize by the European Physical Society, and the
2004 Wolf Prize in Physics.
Peter
Higgs
Peter Ware Higgs (born May 29, 1929), FRSE,
FRS, is an
emeritus
professor at the University of Edinburgh. Higgs is best known for his
1960s proposal of broken symmetry in electroweak theory, explaining the
origin of mass of elementary particles in general and of the W and Z
bosons in particular. This so-called Higgs mechanism, which had several
inventors besides Higgs, predicts the existence of a new particle, the
Higgs boson. Although this particle has not turned up in accelerator
experiments so far, the Higgs mechanism is generally accepted as an
important ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics. Higgs
conceived of the mechanism in 1964 while walking the Cairngorms, and
returned to his lab declaring he had his "one big idea".
Higgs has been awarded a number of awards in recognition of his work,
including the Dirac Medal and Prize for outstanding contributions to
theoretical physics from the Institute of Physics, the 1997 High Energy
and Particle Physics Prize by the European Physical Society, and the
2004 Wolf Prize in Physics.
Higgs was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. His father was a sound engineer
with the BBC, and as a result of childhood asthma, together with the
family moving around because of his father's job, and later the Second
World War, Higgs missed some early schooling and was taught at home.
When his father relocated to Bedford, Higgs stayed behind with his
mother in Bristol, and was largely raised there. He attended that
city's Cotham Grammar School, where he was inspired by the work of one
of the school's alumni, Paul Dirac, who founded the field of quantum
mechanics.
At the age of 17, Higgs moved to City of London School, where he
specialized in mathematics, then to King's College London, and in his
30s, to Edinburgh University. It was at Edinburgh that he first became
interested in mass, developing the idea that particles were weightless
when the universe began, acquiring mass a fraction of a second later,
as a result of interacting with a theoretical field now known as the
Higgs field. Higgs postulated that this field permeates space, giving
all elementary subatomic particles that interact with it their mass.
While the Higgs field is postulated to confer mass on quarks and
leptons, it represents only a tiny portion of the masses of other
subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons. In these, gluons
that bind quarks together confer most of the particle mass.
Large Hadron Collider could unlock
secrets of the Big Bang
Richard Gray
06/04/2008
Image from http://www.gridpp.ac.uk/cubes/
The world's largest and
most expensive science experiment, the new
particle accelerator buried 300ft beneath the Alpine foothills along
the Swiss French border is 17 miles long and up to 12 stories high. It
is designed to generate temperatures of more than a trillion degrees
centigrade. The £4.4 billion machine - the Large Hadron Collider - is
aiming to unlock the secrets of how the universe began. Scientists will
use it to try to recreate the conditions that existed just a fraction
of a second after the Big Bang, the birth of the universe, by smashing
pieces of atoms together at high speed.
The Sunday Telegraph joined the scientist Peter Higgs, a professor of
particle physics at Edinburgh University, whose 40-year-old theories
about an elusive particle known as the Higgs boson may finally be
proved as part of the huge experiment, as he toured the site for the
first time. This weekend will be the last time visitors will be given
access to the tunnel that houses the accelerator ring. From
tomorrow, it will be completely closed off while technicians make the
final preparations before it is turned on in July when, it is hoped, it
will begin revealing what the matter and energy that created the
universe was really like. What happens afterwards could change our
understanding of the world. Most experts believe the explosions created
when the particles hit each other will reveal the basic building blocks
of everything around us. There are some, however, who fear it could
destroy the planet.
A lawsuit filed last week by environmentalists in Hawaii is seeking a
restraining order preventing the European Nuclear Research Centre from
switching it on for fear it could create a black hole that will suck up
all life on Earth. "The Large Hadron Collider is like a time machine
that is going to take us further back towards the Big Bang than we have
ever been before by recreating the conditions that existed there. "We
are going to see new types of matter we haven't been able to see
before," said Professor Frank Close, a particle physicist at Oxford
University. "The idea that it could cause the end of the world is
ridiculous."
Housed in a subterranean lair that would provide a suitable home for a
Hollywood super-villain, it is hardly surprising there are conspiracy
theories surrounding the work being carried out on the collider. The
tunnel is large enough to drive a train through and so long that the
curve is barely noticeable. To reach it requires a two-minute lift
journey from ground level. Down below the scene is a mass of cables,
tubes, electronics and metal panels.
Atomic particles will spiral though a series of rings, lined with
powerful magnets that will accelerate the particles till they reach
close to the speed of light. Each particle will race around the 17-mile
route 11,245 times every second before being smashed headlong into each
other, breaking them into their component parts, releasing huge amounts
of energy and debris. The temperatures produced by these collisions
will be 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the sun and scientists
believe this will be powerful enough to reveal the first particles that
existed in the moments immediately after the birth of the universe.
This massive experiment will create more than 15 million gigabytes of
data every year - the equivalent of 21.4 million CDs. The scientists
have had to design a new form of the internet to cope with the data.
Six separate detectors have been positioned around the collider ring to
allow scientists to examine what happens. Among the particles they will
hunt for is the Higgs boson, a cornerstone of modern physics that is
thought to be responsible for giving every other particle its mass, or
weight.
Immediately after the Big Bang all particles are thought to have had no
mass. As the temperature cooled, the Higgs boson "stuck" to them,
making them heavy. Some particles are more "sticky" than others and so
gain more weight. A massive detector known as Atlas is among those that
will be hunting for the Higgs boson. As big as Canterbury Cathedral and
weighing more than 100 747 jumbo jet aircraft, it is one of the most
impressive parts of the collider.
Professor Jonathan Butterworth, a physicist at University College
London who is among the UK scientists involved in the Atlas experiment,
said: "If we find the Higgs boson then it will prove our standard model
of particle physics. "If we don't find it then nature may have another
way of giving particles mass and that is going to turn science on its
head."
Two elevator rides and a 10-minute car journey away on the other side
of the giant accelerator, another part of the experiment, dubbed Alice,
will recreate the superheated gas, or plasma, that existed when the
universe was formed. The collider may also reveal more exotic phenomena
such as anti-matter, the opposite of ordinary matter, mini black holes
and even extra dimensions.
"At the level of energy we will be creating normal matter doesn't
exist. I expect we will see some things that are entirely new and could
turn our current understanding of physics on its head," said Dr David
Evans, a physicist from Birmingham University who has been working on
the Alice project.
"Answering these new questions will be more exciting than proving
theories that already exist."
Information of: Frost's Medidations
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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