HIGGS BOSON - SCI & TECH
News: Explained | The decade-long search for a rare Higgs boson decay
What is in the news?
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Recently, physicists
working with the Large Hadron Collider, particle-smasher at CERN, in Europe,
reported that they had detected a Higgs boson decaying into a Z boson particle
and a photon.
Key details about the Higgs boson:
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The Higgs boson is a type
of boson, a force-carrying subatomic
particle.
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The Higgs boson is the
fundamental particle associated with the Higgs
field, a field that gives mass to other fundamental particles such as electrons
and quarks.
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Fundamental particles in
our universe acquire mass through their interactions
with the Higgs field.
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The Higgs boson is an extremely short-lived particle with a
mass of around 125 Gigaelectronvolts (GeV).
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It decays rapidly into other particles, making its direct detection
challenging.
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Scientists at the LHC
used high-energy particle collisions to produce the Higgs boson and observed
its decay products to confirm its existence.
ABOUT ELEMENTARY PARTICLES:
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An elementary particle is
what physicists call particles that have no structure and cannot be divided;
They are building blocks of the Universe.
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There are two kinds of
fundamental particles:
○ Fermions make up matter
○ Bosons carry forces