Telescope Reviews: What's a Higgs Boson?

Last night, while watching the presidential debates, a friend asked me what, in simple terms, a Higgs Boson was.

Despite all the popular press on it he admitted to only a vague idea about this 'Higgs thing'.

After thinking about it a bit I came up with the following analogy. So I thought I would share it to encourage commentary.

Like anything else at this level of resolution, the Higgs can be seen as a field or as a kind of particle depending on how one looks at it. Hence the terms Higgs field & Higgs boson.

The Higg's field and Higgs boson give all matter in the universe the characteristic of 'mass'. So it's kind of important.

To conceptualize it, think of yourself standing out in a large field surrounded by geese. The geese are standing all around you.

Now you start walking in any direction. The geese in front of you are taken by surprise and you meet resistance as you accelerate up to walking speed and your feet hit the geese trying to flee out of the way. this 'resistance' is called inertia.

After getting up to walking speed the geese anticipate your travel and flee before you as you continue walking in a straight line. This is the old 'once put in motion an object stays in motion," kinda thing.

Now as you start to run the geese are again taken by surprise and you encounter resistance as your feet whack into the fleeing geese once again. This occurs until you stabilize your speed and the geese can once more anticipate your path and get out of the way.

This is the concept of the Higgs Field.

Now you stop. As you come to rest the geese around you suspect you may have birdseed in your pocket and those nearest you gather close in a knot. They kinda 'hold' you in place and offer resistance to easy movement (ie: give you rest mass).

This 'knot' of geese is the concept of the Higgs boson.

Let me stress that there is no evidence that the Higgs theory is correct other than two little things: It describes how mass arises perfectly and, there is no other theory that remotely comes close to explaining how objects in our universe come to have mass.

The LHC will, hopefully, allow a picture to be taken of a Higgs Boson as a few form under the immense collision energies.

The Higgs may or may not exist. Either way it will be a monumental piece of information put towards our understanding of the universe.

I tend to think it won't be found. I don't like the entire Higgs concept as too ad hoc. But I offer no alternative.

As always, I welcome commentary on these thoughts.

Pesse (Geesh, I hope with all these collisions at the LHC that France & Switzerland are no-fault states.) Mist