Explain the Higgs boson so my wife can understand
- Thread starter Colbaker
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Lol....explaining science to a girl...good luck with that!
I think CERN should do some tests to see if it possible
.Tell your wife that the Higgs Boson is basically the missing piece in the Jigsaw that explains matter and that even after many decades of trying to search for this piece it still has not been found. There is no way this can be explained in lay man word without some details being lost.
Pronounce it 'Higgs Bosom' and see where that leads.
Caporegime
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But how do we know the Higgs Bosom is the smallest element?
How do we know there is not something smaller?
First there is the molecule, then proton, the quacks and now the Higgs Bosom.
How do we know there is not something smaller?
First there is the molecule, then proton, the quacks and now the Higgs Bosom.
Cheers for the replays lads 
If I were to explain it thus...
We are all made of atoms, atoms are made of particles and particles are made up of sub atomic particles, some particles have no mass I.e photons but some do, the Higgs boson will help to explain why some sub particles have mass.
If I were to explain it thus...
We are all made of atoms, atoms are made of particles and particles are made up of sub atomic particles, some particles have no mass I.e photons but some do, the Higgs boson will help to explain why some sub particles have mass.
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Soldato
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It's a constituent particle that's supposed to give other constituent particles mass. It's existence basically makes everything a lot easier, as it means that there aren't massive problems with the Standard Model.
Today's announcement all but proves it's existence, since there are two teams working on it; ATLAS and CMS. ATLAS reported an excess at 126 GeV of 2.3 sigma, which might sound complicated but what it meas is that there's a deviation of 2.3 from what you would expect to find if there was no Higgs Boson. On it's own this data has about a 1% chance of being down to random errors, but with the CMS crew reporting somewhat similar results of excesses between 115 and 127GeV of 1.9 sigma - both showing significant deviation from what you would expect to find meaning it's almost a certainty that it exists. All we need now is someone to come up with a deviation of about 4.5-5 for definite proof.
This might help:
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/naxmk/the_everything_you_need_to_know_about_the_higgs/
Today's announcement all but proves it's existence, since there are two teams working on it; ATLAS and CMS. ATLAS reported an excess at 126 GeV of 2.3 sigma, which might sound complicated but what it meas is that there's a deviation of 2.3 from what you would expect to find if there was no Higgs Boson. On it's own this data has about a 1% chance of being down to random errors, but with the CMS crew reporting somewhat similar results of excesses between 115 and 127GeV of 1.9 sigma - both showing significant deviation from what you would expect to find meaning it's almost a certainty that it exists. All we need now is someone to come up with a deviation of about 4.5-5 for definite proof.
This might help:
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/naxmk/the_everything_you_need_to_know_about_the_higgs/
Caporegime
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QUACKS, that made me laugh.
Simple answer is, we don't - and I think you mean quarks lol.
Explain it to her like this.
You know when you look at another woman and you say to yourself, "Wow her outfit looks amazing!" but you cannot put your finger on why? And then you discover it's the subtle streak of purple on the handbag that matches the shoes? The Higgs Boson is the purple.
You know when you look at another woman and you say to yourself, "Wow her outfit looks amazing!" but you cannot put your finger on why? And then you discover it's the subtle streak of purple on the handbag that matches the shoes? The Higgs Boson is the purple.
Soldato
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And also it's bigger than other bosons, hence why the LHC was built to smash things at higher energies. Since mass proportional to energy. It's not exactly constituent of the proton or quarks, it just interacts much much more weakly than the other forces.
At least that's my understanding anyway.
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Soldato
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The journey is it's own reward, my son.
Caporegime
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May be they can use it to invent one of those microwave looking machines in Star Trek where you ask for a food, it create it out of particles stored?