When we look up to the sky and see the huge, unending universe, we more often than not stumble upon the question that how does this universe work? Perhaps sometimes the mystery of our existence makes us curious about how all the aspects in this world exist beautifully together despite being in a state of suspension. What are we made of? How were we born? There are several questions related to this and the answer to these enthralling questions is the subject of particle physics. According to Physics professors, science is always about asking questions and not being satisfied with any answer. Likewise, while chasing the unidentified part of the standard model of Particle Physics, a team of international scientists discovered the Higgs Boson.
Toyoko Orimoto and Emanuela Barberis, two of the associate professors of Physics at Northeastern University, witnessed the historical discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012 when they were undergraduate students. Hundreds of physicists worked with scrupulous dedication to building the standard model of particle physics in 1970. However, it lacked in completion as it did not observe the most important particle of the model until 2012 which explained the substance of the other particles. An abridged version, particle physics is the study of the particles that form the matter of the universe and Boson’s help them to stick together. These cannot be separated naturally except during the ‘big bang’ or by the usage of a particle accelerator or collider present in the largest physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland which also happened to be the place where Tim Berners Lee invented the internet.
Though the huge invention of the Higgs Boson was celebrated, the scientists did not stop at that point and have continued to follow the newly discovered path to bring out more information and facts about particle physics, as Orimoto says, “It appears that we truly understand very very little”.
Rubena Bose