Scientists announce possibility of particle smaller than Higgs Boson
LONDON: Until 2012, nobody was certain it existed till the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced they had found the God Particle.
Scientists now say that it is more likely than ever now that there must be particles smaller than Higgs particle
"Nobody has seen them yet; particles that are smaller than the Higgs particle. However theories predict their existence, and now the most important of these theories have been critically tested," they said.
The result: The existence of the yet unseen particles is now more likely than ever".
The Higgs Boson is central part of the Standard Model of particle physics that describes how the world is constructed.
According to the Standard Model, everything, from flowers and people to stars and planets, consists of just a few building blocks: matter particles. These particles are governed by forces mediated by force particles that make sure everything works as it should.
The entire Standard Model also rests on the existence of a special kind of particle: the Higgs particle. This particle originates from an invisible field that fills up all space. Even when the universe seems empty this field is there. Without it, we would not exist, because it is from contact with the field that particles acquire mass.
On 4 July 2012, at the CERN laboratory for particle physics, the theory was confirmed by the discovery of a Higgs particle.
CERN's particle collider, LHC (Large Hadron Collider), is probably the largest and the most complex machine ever constructed by humans.
Last year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics to Peter Higgs after whom the particle is named.
But in a new twist, Thomas Ryttov, particle physicist and associate professor at the Centre for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology refers to the theories, that over the last five years have been put forward for the existence of particles in the universe that are smaller than the Higgs particle.
Having given these theories a critical review, he finds no new signs of weakness in them:
"There seems to be no new or unseen weaknesses. My review just leaves them just stronger," he says.
Over the past 5-8 years, a handful of theories have drawn particular interest from particle physicists. They all predict that there must be one or more types of particles that are even smaller than the Higgs particle. So far it has however not been possible to prove their existence.
"Here we are interested in the pursuit of such as yet unknown particles. We know that there must be a force that binds them together so that they together can create something bigger than themselves, something composite; a Higgs particle. It must happen similarly to quarks binding together to form protons and neutrons. If we can understand this force, we can explain and predict new physical phenomena like new particles," explains Ryttov.
This force is called the strong force, he says. It cannot be compared to gravity, which also has the ability to keep two objects close together. The effect of gravity depends on the fact that the two objects are not too far from each other, and the closer they are to each other the stronger the force of gravity will be. The strong force has the opposite effect: It is weak when two particles are close to each other, but strong - extremely strong - if you try to pull them apart.
Thomas Ryttov and his colleagues believe that the so-called techni-quarks can be the yet unseen particles, smaller than the Higgs particle. If techni-quarks exist they will form a natural exention of the Standard Model which includes three generations of quarks and leptons. These particles together with the fundamental forces form the basis of the observed matter in the universe.