Nobel Prize in physics awarded to pair who theorized Higgs boson
They call it the “God particle.” It holds the key to humanity’s presence on Earth — indeed, to the existence of all the matter in the universe.
Feuding nations have set aside their differences and devoted billions of dollars to finding it. Scientists built massive supercolliders capable of producing temperatures nearly as frigid as the coldest spots in outer space in their quest to unravel its secrets. Even then, it took nearly half a century to get a glimpse of the thing.
Now, in a crowning moment, two theoretical physicists have won the Nobel Prize in physics for having the gumption to envision that such a thing might have existed in the first place.
Way back in 1964, Belgium’s Francois Englert and Britain’s Peter Higgs independently theorized the existence of a subatomic particle that came to be known as the Higgs boson. It was key to explaining how things acquired mass, and became a cornerstone of the so-called Standard Model of particle physics.
The award was widely anticipated. To the winners, it seemed something of an afterthought following the dramatic announcement on July 4, 2012, that the Higgs boson had been found.
“I’m very happy,” said Englert, now 80, after the prize was announced Tuesday morning in Stockholm. “What can I say more?”
The reclusive Higgs, 84, limited his response to a 59-word statement posted on the website of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is an emeritus professor of theoretical physics.
“I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research,” he wrote.
Many of the thousands of scientists who participated in the quest were more visibly excited about the award. They gathered in the atrium of the building in Switzerland that houses the Higgs-hunting teams at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, to listen to the announcement from Stockholm.
“When they mentioned Francois Englert’s name the whole place erupted in applause and shouts,” said UC Santa Barbara physicist Joseph Incandela, who led one of the CERN teams. “The same was repeated when we heard ‘Peter Higgs’ called out.”
“Everyone just wanted to celebrate,” he said in a statement released by the university. “We popped champagne bottles and drank toasts and everyone congratulated everyone.”
As scientists homed in on the elusive particle last summer, it became a pop culture phenomenon, parodied by the likes of Stephen Colbert and even transformed into a cuddly plush doll with a sideways grin.
That would have been hard to imagine in the early 1960s, when scientists were making headway on the Standard Model. The theory describes the subatomic particles that are the basic building blocks of the universe, along with how they interact.
But theorists had a problem: Their equations only worked if particles had no mass. That was an impossibility in a universe loaded with stuff such as stars, planets and people.
Englert, along with collaborator Robert Brout, and Higgs each wrote separate papers that came up with a possible solution. They imagined that the universe might be permeated by an invisible field that essentially slowed particles down, imparting them with mass and allowing the world around us to exist.
“This one idea made all the equations work,” said Robert Cousins, a physicist at UCLA.
The hypothesized field was eventually known as the Higgs field. If it existed, it would also be associated with a particle, which came to be known as the Higgs boson.
Over the years, numerous experiments supported the existence of a Higgs field, or something very much like it. But Englert and Higgs would not get complete recognition for their insight until scientists were able to detect a Higgs boson.
Physicists study subatomic particles by smashing beams of other particles at super-high speeds and analyzing the shrapnel that results from the collisions.
Scientists had an idea about what types of shrapnel they needed to see to confirm that the Higgs boson was real. But it was only with the construction of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva that they had the power they needed to see a Higgs boson, said Vivek Sharma, a particle physicist at UC San Diego who spent years commuting back and forth to Switzerland.
Earlier colliders, including Fermilab’s Tevatron in Illinois, didn’t have the juice. But experimental physicists thought that CERN’s more energetic collider could do the job.
Sure enough, two large experiments known as CMS and ATLAS collected data that essentially confirmed the existence of a Higgs boson. That provided the evidence the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences needed to make the award to Englert and Higgs, the Nobel committee said.
Sharma, who led the CMS Higgs search, compared the predictions to a Dr. Seuss book he often read to his young daughter.
“It’s like ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’ You see something outrageous like that, you don’t even want to touch it,” he said. “But finally, we tasted green eggs and ham, and it tasted very good.”
He said scientists kept up the difficult search — building increasingly powerful colliders and creating ever-larger collaborations — because “we want to know where we come from. What is this universe made of?”
Cousins, who also works with the CMS experiment, said it was gratifying to see Englert and Higgs win the prize at a time when many are skeptical of scientific pursuit.
“I’m happy we can be held up as an example where science works, and questions get answered, even if it takes 50 years,” he said.
Cousins said he thought many would have been upset if the theorists hadn’t won this year, simply because they are getting old. (Brout, who died in 2011, was not able to share in the $1.2-million award because the Nobel committee does not hand out prizes posthumously.)
Cousins also said he had heard that Higgs had “gone underground” for a few days and wouldn’t emerge until later in the week.
“He figured it would be unbearable either way” — whether he won or not, Cousins joked.
The Nobel committee’s announcement was delayed by one hour, which prompted Englert to fret that perhaps he and Higgs had been passed over, the Belgian winner said.
Englert, of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, added that there were still many important questions remaining to be solved in particle physics. Scientists still hope to probe dark matter and dark energy as well, he said.
The Large Hadron Collider could help in those pursuits. It’s shuttered for improvements right now, but will begin smashing proton beams again in 2015, this time at energies even higher than those that revealed the Higgs boson.
“The fact that we found the Higgs boson doesn’t mean we’re done,” Cousins said.
