Boson Higgs particle

God on the other hand deserves full credit, or blame.

Herewith a brief introduction, in question and answer format, for the buzz-curious.

What’s the basic idea?

Suppose that a species of fish evolved to the point that some of them became physicists, and began to ponder how things move. At first the fish-physicists would, by observation and measurement, derive very complicated laws. But eventually a fish-genius would imagine a different, ideal world ruled by much simpler laws of motion–the laws we humans call Newton’s laws. The great new idea would be that motion looks complicated, in the everyday fish-world, because there’s an all-pervasive medium–water!–that complicates how things move.

Modern physics proposes something very similar for our world. We can use much nicer equations if we’re ready to assume that the “space” of our everyday perception is actually a medium whose influence complicates how matter is observed to move.

Are there precedents for such an outrageous dodge?

Yes. In fact it’s a time-honored, successful strategy.

For example: In its basic equations, Newtonian mechanics postulates complete symmetry among the three dimensions of space. Yet in everyday experience there’s a big difference between motion in vertical, as opposed to horizontal, directions. The difference is ascribed to a medium: a pervasive gravitational field.

A much more modern example occurs in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), our fundamental theory of the strong force between quarks and gluons. There we discover that the universe is filled with a medium, the sigma (σ) field, that forms a sort of cosmic molasses for protons and neutrons. The σ field slows protons and neutrons down. Allowing a bit of poetic license, we can say that the σ field gives protons and neutrons mass. Many consequences of the σ field have been calculated and successfully observed, so that to modern physicists it is now every bit as real as Earth’s gravity field. But the σ field exists everywhere and everywhen; it is not tied to Earth.

What’s the new idea, then?

In the theory of the weak force, we need to do a similar trick for less familiar particles, the W and Z bosons. We could have beautiful equations for those particles if their masses were zero; but their masses are observed not to be zero. So we postulate the existence of a new all-pervasive field, the so-called Higgs condensate, which slows them down. This proposal, which here I’ve described only loosely and in words, comes embodied in specific equations and leads to many testable predictions. This proposal has been resoundingly successful.