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The Higgs Boson

2012-07-07 · Hank · watch on YouTube · Science & nature · news analysis

Hank, on vacation the week the Higgs boson is found, explains why physics needed the Higgs field: it gives particles their differing masses, and the newly seen boson confirms the field exists.

What is said

00:00:00 — Hank on vacation in Laguna Beach after VidCon, missing the week of the biggest particle-physics discovery in a century; a fuller VidCon video to come

  • ★ Hank says he is on vacation in Laguna Beach, has a new obsession with Instagram, and hasn't yet digested everything that happened at VidCon. — 00:00:00 · VidCon
  • ★★ Hank says he is looking forward to making a more complete video of his thoughts from VidCon. — 00:00:00 · VidCon
  • ★★ Hank says the biggest discovery in particle physics in the last hundred years happened the one week he is out of the SciShow office, which is a little frustrating. — 00:00:00 · SciShow
  • ★★ In the description Hank says we now officially know a lot more about the universe, and he is pleased the world is still committed to pure science and discovery. — 00:00:00
  • ★ In the description Hank thanks Henry Reich of MinutePhysics for looking the video over. — 00:00:00

00:00:35 — Explainer: four forces and their force carriers, why mass needed explaining, the Higgs field and why the Higgs boson's detection confirms it; 'no edge' sign-off

  • ★★ Hank says there are only four forces in the universe (strong, weak, gravity, electromagnetism) and only three types of particles, so it is remarkably simple. — 00:00:35
  • ★★ Hank says quantum mechanics showed fields aren't what we imagine: a magnet's field is a fog of virtual photons from a point source; forces are carried by virtual particles called gauge bosons. — 00:00:35
  • ★★ Hank says every force carrier has been observed except the graviton, which probably will never be seen, so we may never really know whether it exists. (hedged) — 00:01:04
  • ★★★ Hank says this elegant system couldn't explain why matter has mass: photons have none, electrons a little, some particles a lot, yet all are sizeless. — 00:01:24
  • ★★ Hank says a top quark is 350,000 times more massive than an electron (earlier: hundreds of thousands of times), although both are the same size. — 00:01:54
  • ★★★ Hank says in the 1960s scientists including Higgs theorized an evenly distributed field filling the universe; particles get mass by interacting with it, and photons, which don't, travel at light speed. — 00:01:54
  • ★★ Hank says the equations showed that without this field all particles would move at the speed of light, making everything we know impossible. — 00:02:23
  • ★★★ Hank says the Higgs boson is not the part of the system that gives particles mass; it is the observable part that confirms the Higgs field exists. — 00:02:52
  • ★★★ Hank says that because mass and energy are the same, slamming particles together with enough energy excites the Higgs field, and the new particle has now been seen. — 00:02:52
  • ★★ Hank says the field makes everything we love possible, from fireworks to dolphins to the ocean to your boyfriend, across a universe with no edge. (playful) — 00:03:21

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