Nature is capricious, the Higgs mechanism - The Mundo.es

After a year and a half of hearing about particle physics, with the excuse of the famous Higgs, one believes any sacrilege not venturing to write about the capricious whims of quarks.

These tiny elementary particles, grouped in threes, lead to the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus, have “flavor quantum”. Confined in protons and neutrons, these quarks change flavor: the type “up” become “down”, and these in “up”, in a dance of fire where electrons, positrons and neutrinos are the guests of honor . This physical process called “beta decay”, is key to take place nuclear fusion reactions in stars, including the Sun in these reactions not only generated a huge amount of energy (electricity and heat), but create nuclei of heavy atoms such as carbon, oxygen, iron and so on. It’s about time that the evolution of stars is responsible for spreading these atoms by their vicinity, leading to planets, petunias and laboratories where knowledge is cultivated.

Nature is capricious in its manifestations, but not in its mechanisms. change the quark flavor is a result of the weak nuclear force that in the Standard Model of particle physics, is “spread” for a so-called Z and W bosons The Higgs field is responsible for these particles are very massive, and that, therefore, beta decay occurs sedate pace that allows the stars to shine for billions of years, of great benefit to our own existence.

Swedish Academy of Sciences has not overlooked the importance of the mechanism of Brout-Englert-Higgs in the Standard Model, awarding the Nobel Prize in Physics Englert and Higgs physics “by the theoretical discovery”-in 1964 – “the mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of the mass of subatomic particles.” A determining factor for Englert and Higgs received this recognition has been the recent confirmation of his model “through the discovery of the fundamental particle predicted”-the Higgs boson “by the ATLAS and CMS experiments of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC ) at CERN “.

collective effort contributed significantly Spanish research groups members of the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN, giving ample account of the limited Spanish investment in basic research.

---

Pablo Garcia Abia is physical at CIEMAT (Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology) and member of the CMS experiment at CERN in Geneva who found the Higgs boson.