Proof of extra dimensions possible next year: CERN

For a long time I wondered what the Higgs boson was about, and then I saw a good explanation in Scientific American.

Here is what it comes down to. It turns out that the laws of physics become greatly simplified if we can assert that, there are symmetries between apparently disparate forces. For instance we would like the electromagnetic force and the weak force to be exactly equivalent. There is a pretty obvious problem with this assertion though, and it is that those forces are obviously very different, electromagnetism can work at any distance while the weak force works on the scale of a nucleus.

But physicists are clever, and came up with a solution. What happens if the symmetry exists, but there is a field whose job is to differentiate the two which makes it very likely that you'll be in a stable state with them very different? This is called "spontaneous symmetry breaking". In our universe, the weak and electromagnetic forces are different, in another their roles could be reversed. But in the actual laws of physics, they are entirely symmetric.

On the surface this would seem to be an assertion without content. But it is not. According to QM, every field must be be carried by an associated boson. Those bosons are particles that can be detected. We can predict some of the properties of those bosons. If we can find them, then we've verified the theory.

With this approach physicists put together something they call the standard model. It predicts a whole zoo of particles. Every one of which has been discovered except one. And that remaining one is the Higgs boson, whose job is to make the masses of the photon, W boson, and Z boson all different.

Now with that in mind you can read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson and some of it might make some modicum of sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model gives more background.

Will we have to upgrade our brand-new TV sets again?

"These experiments have shown the power of the link-up of 140 computing centers around the world known as the Grid which processes the vast amounts of information that ion collisions produce."

I wonder if there is any sort of distributed, volunteer computing program that those of us so inclined could participate in to lend a hand to the processing efforts; something along the lines of SETI@home and Folding@home would certainly be helpful I would think. Such high amounts of new, raw data could surely use any help that they can get in the processing stage.