The Higgs boson

Science’s great leap forward

After decades of searching, physicists have solved one of the mysteries of the universe

See article

Readers' comments



I wonder why there is no mention of S.N. Bose, who is the father of 'boson' in the Higginsboson particle. I am disappointed The economist.

CLikeCarl in reply to Jackprem

Because there are lots of bosons, not just the Higgs (photons, for example) and he had nothing to do with this project or the discovery of the Higgs, predating it by a few decades.

That's like asking why Alan Turing isn't mentioned in articles about the iPhone.

indyeah in reply to CLikeCarl

The 'boson' in the Higgs boson particle, whose search and ultimate detection was one of the longest and most expensive in the history of science, owes its name to Bose. In 1924, the city-based physicist had sent a paper to Albert Einstein, describing a statistical model that led to the discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate phenomenon. The paper laid the basis for describing the two classes of subatomic particles - bosons, named after Bose, and fermions, after Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.
Now according to Subir Sarkar, a scientist associated with CERN - ""It's nice to raise a toast to Bose anytime, a scientist past excellence whose contribution to physics is so immense that the discovery of Higgs particle pales in comparison. But it is sad that we are celebrating him on an occasion like this. He is too big a scientist to bask in the reflected glory of a Higgs particle. Bose's theory is fundamental to the subject. Had Higgs particle not existed, it would not have mattered. But without Bose, science would have had to return to the roots,"
I have quoted this from here -

indyeah in reply to Jackprem

We Indians did not give him any recognition he deserved then why blame TE ? For us Bollywood and Cricket is more important than these less important physics stuff. Our nation went to the dogs long time back and its unfortunate for great scientists like S.N. Bose who did not take birth in America or any European nation.

as3005 in reply to indyeah

Come on, not even the five other guys who predicted the Higgs boson at the same time as Higgs are mentioned by name. Even in your patriotic fervor you should consider that this is only a newspaper article.

CLikeCarl in reply to indyeah

Yes, I know all of that. But the existence of *bosons* has been known for many decades. The Higgs is merely a single particle in the broad class of particles called "bosons". S.N. Bose had nothing to do with its prediction, the construction of CERN, or this project.

Yes, he laid some of the earlier groundwork that led to it. But if we're going down that road, why not mention Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the existence of subatomic particles? The Higgs is one of those, too.

The point being, there are many great, brilliant men whose work led, though some causal chain, to this project. There's no need or reason to mention every single one of them. S.N. Bose not being mentioned isn't some slight against the Indian people, and I'm not sure why you insist on interpreting it that way.


"Within 40 years, Einstein’s theories paved the way for the Manhattan Project and the scourge of nuclear weapons."

Scourge? With out them if we had World Wars III and IV on the bellicose tempo from the first half of the 20th century, the relative stability and lack of global warfare of the second half of the 20th century would be Godsend. Perhaps this scenario sans nuclear weapons played out in an alternate universe?

Thoth28 in reply to zerge

Didn't you see Independence Day? We tried to nuke their motherships, but they couldn't penetrate the force shields. It's a good thing we had Jeff Goldblum of we would've all been goners.


"The laws of physics, though, are eternal and universal."
How do you know? Did you tested it 13 billions years ago? Did you tested it beyond Orion?

Uh-huh thought so in reply to Mandra

Add this gem of drivel to the pile:

"Without the Higgs there would be no mass. And without mass, there would be no stars, no planets and no atoms. And certainly no human beings ... That means, for them, that the past, the present and the future are the same thing."

Without Higgs, we would simply seek an alternative explanation for inertial mass. What's with all that other nonsense? Yeah, without pigs we wouldn't have bacon cheeseburger. Duh.

At one time people had seen pigs but didn't know there was bacon in there. And even after someone found in the pig what would become know as bacon, somebody had to realize that you could eat and not get sick if you cook it.

So now we know that a thing that fits the description of Higgs boson does exist in an atom. Now we'll have to wait for a cook.

So68pw7M3C in reply to o5ToaMCf9v

Nicely said. Thank you.

Why not take a moment to play and consider - fractal out this understanding of reality? How might we more closely align or attune our selves and systems to this understanding of the nature of things? Be creative.


From the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.


Well, they didn't actually find it. They found the dollar.

It's like the Tooth Fairy. No one has ever seen her, but we know she exists because we find the dollar.


This is an accomplishment of massive proportions. Congratulations to the CERN crew, so discerning in their collisions!



Connect The Dots

Ask yourself: "Is my life better today?"
...Then thank the Higgs Boson.

Like Superman, it is rumored the HB can perform miraculous feats including reverse the rotation of the Earth, travel back in time, compress a lump of coal into a diamond, and escape from Black Holes.

Marvel Comics is debuting a new comic book hero, HB Man, in the Fall, 2012. Backstory: mild mannered scientist nerd that gets his white coat stuck in the Hadron Collider during powerup, accidentally gets radiated with cosmic rays, and gains super powers. He has laser sharp mind, a fast internet connection and laser beam eyes.

He fights injustice and opponents of EU integration. His sidekick is a female French Mime clown called Hags Bozo. She is the master of the one liners. And the world's first talking mime.

Thanks, Higgs Boson Man!

Connect The Dots

The GREAT LEAP FORWARD in China is now realized as the single greatest Man-made catastrophe of the Post WWII Era: more deaths, more disease and more regression of technology, culture and education than any single human event.

The Great Leap of the 1960's left China poorer, more diseased, and hungry than Sub Saharan Africa. Then they began executing the intellectuals and educated--they were too subversive. China was worst off than Somalia is today.

The failure propelled China to change: it did a complete 180 on Communism. And we see the miraculous results today.


It is ironic and maybe appropriate to call the Higgs Boson: SCIENCE'S GREAT LEAP FORWARD.


I would like to thank the economist for an extremely well written article about cutting edge physics. So many popular explanations of science get caught up in the hype. There was a clear explanation of why this discovery is a big deal: 'The laws of physics, though, are eternal and universal. Elucidating them is one of the triumphs of mankind.' And a brief and clear rejection of utilitarian justifications for trying to understand: 'The last really useful subatomic particle to be discovered, though, was the neutron in 1932. Particles found subsequently are too hard to make, and too short-lived to be useful.' Bravo and keep up the work.

80 years in modern science is equivalent to the previous millenia in science, may be even two millenia.

80 years without new discovery or innovation usually means the knowledge is at an impasse. New discoveries may come, but it is increasingly, statistically unlikely. We are not about to discover a new law of magnetism or acceleration.

The new Aries Rocket ship technology is essentially the same from the 50 year old Apollo program. The newest jet planes use the same technology as the 60 year old Boeing 707. Train diesel locomotives use the same layout and engine technology as 80 years ago. The internal combustion petrol engine is one hundred years old, and still basically the same 4 stroke design.

The Higgs Boson will not lead to jet-back packs. Or anti gravity shoes.

Gravity: It's not just a good's the Law.

This is because new scientific discoveries target things that are harder to find, and thus less easily applicable to every day life. This does not mean technology may not at some point reach a level where the more newly discovered particles can be used.

We are not going to see an immediate technology dependent on the Higgs, but I find it unlikely that in all of humanities future, no one is going to make use of this information.

Stephen Bishop

"Literally. Without the Higgs there would be no mass."

Not literally. There is mass whether it's due to the Higgs or not. This is simply the result of an experiment that people feel maps into the paradigm of a Higgs Boson.

God will continue to wend a merry trail.

jouris - old account

On my browser (Firefox) the video is overlying all the text between "...what physicists think they know about the universe would be wrong." and "...and a menagerie..." It's a pain having to use the Web Developer option to dig thru the page source to see what was being said. Perhaps the tech folks could look at the HTML and see what is going wrong.



The "Boson" is named after the Indian physicist Satyendranath Bose. Anyone who thinks Indians are more stupid than Chinese should read the following from Wikipaedia on the Boson:





[edit] A derivation of the Bose–Einstein distribution

Suppose we have a number of energy levels, labeled by index , each level having energy and containing a total of particles. Suppose each level contains distinct sublevels, all of which have the same energy, and which are distinguishable. For example, two particles may have different momenta, in which case they are distinguishable from each other, yet they can still have the same energy. The value of associated with level is called the "degeneracy" of that energy level. Any number of bosons can occupy the same sublevel.

Let be the number of ways of distributing particles among the sublevels of an energy level. There is only one way of distributing particles with one sublevel, therefore . It is easy to see that there are ways of distributing particles in two sublevels which we will write as:

With a little thought (see Notes below) it can be seen that the number of ways of distributing particles in three sublevels is

so that

where we have used the following theorem involving binomial coefficients:

Continuing this process, we can see that is just a binomial coefficient (See Notes below)

For example, the population numbers for two particles in three sublevels are 200, 110, 101, 020, 011, or 002 for a total of six which equals 4!/(2!2!). The number of ways that a set of occupation numbers can be realized is the product of the ways that each individual energy level can be populated...."

GodricGriffindor in reply to DAULATRAM

Actually, I like the last paragraph very much, thanks for the detailed explanation. However, Science should not be subject to nationalism. The only four countries that successfully linked science to nationalism were the soviets, Germans, Americans and now Chinese, I am sure they will be wrong too. While its the Europeans who seem to be making actual progress, and they are doing it in peace and unity.


I wish I could corner a physicist, I have about a zillion questions about this whole thing. For example
1. how could this particle make other particles bend space.
2. what happens to Higgs in a black hole, just how would that work
3. gravity? (lots of questions there)
4. does the Higgs boson have a wavefunction too, or a discernable location?

I can't keep up with this stuff.



Products and events


Take our weekly news quiz to stay on top of the headlines

