Higgs fields forever

I tried to write the article from the simplicity found at the beginning of the article through the sermon to the secret found at the end, each and every one according to ability and interest

Following the announcement by the scientists of the LHC particle accelerator about the discovery of the Higgs particle, the particle they like to call the "God particle" and the media noise surrounding the discovery, it is time to ask what all the fuss is about, what is so important about this discovery and why has the nickname the God particle stuck to it? I invite you to dive with me into the depths of forgiveness, without compromise, towards the insights we have managed to learn in the meantime about the secret of creation and the reality around us. I tried to write the article from the simplicity found at the beginning of the article through the sermon to the secret found at the end, each and every one according to ability and interest.

The scientists basically announced that they discovered with a high probability of 99.99995% "a new particle that behaves in a manner consistent with the predictions for the activity of the Higgs particle". In other words, most likely we have discovered the Higgs particle, a particle whose existence was predicted in theory already 43 years ago. The joy is especially great because of two reasons, this discovery is another step towards a theory that will try to fulfill Einstein's vision - the vision of the unification of forces under one theory that explains everything - the "unified field theory". We are still far from realizing such a "theory of everything", but the theory that predicted the Higgs particle is another stop on the way to the goal and now there is further confirmation that it is real and that we are on the right track.

The second reason is that the Higgs particle is related to the mechanism that is responsible for the masses of the elementary particles that make up our universe. This mechanism that gives masses to particles is called the Higgs mechanism and it predicts the existence of the Higgs particle. Now that we have found that the prediction is correct and the particle exists, the chance that the Higgs mechanism is a real and correct mechanism is strengthened. Therefore we can say with more confidence how the property of mass was added to the particles that make us up. Because of the connection between the Higgs particle and the mechanism that gives mass to all particles in the universe (and probably also because of the experimental difficulty in discovering it), the Higgs particle was called the "God particle". Imagine another universe where there is no Higgs mechanism, as a result the electron particle would have no mass at all, the electrons would only move at the speed of light and only in straight lines and no seals would form as we know them and certainly life as we know them would not develop. The existence of masses for the elementary particles is critical to the design of the universe and therefore the Higgs particle as representing the entire mechanism received this pretentious nickname. One can see in the name of the God particle also a hint of the goal of our physical search - a search that can be called the search for the divine symmetry and the discovery of the Higgs particle is another step in this direction.

Another story claims that this nickname was created because it was very difficult for the experimenters to find the Higgs particle and every time they would get angry and ask "! where is this god damn particle" and this nickname is shortened to the God particle (in Hebrew this will not work, "where in God's name is this particle?") …

The curious among the readers and the brave ones who are not afraid to dive into the depths of reality and the insights that await us there must be asking 'so what is this search for divine symmetry and what is this mechanism thanks to which particles have masses? And how is it even possible to unite the forces that seem so different into one force?'

grand unified theory

We know four fundamental forces in nature, gravitation - the force of gravity, the electromagnetic force - the force of attraction and repulsion between positive and negative electrical and magnetic charges, and two more nuclear forces that operate at very short distances, distances on the order of atomic nuclei (10-15 meters or 0.000000000000001 meters ) These two forces are called by very original names - the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force.

The strong nuclear force, among other things, causes the atom to have a nucleus at all. It causes the nuclear particles to adhere to each other and does not allow them to escape. The weak nuclear force causes particles to change one of their properties and therefore become another particle. One of the results of this force is the radioactive decay that causes the nucleus of a heavy atom to break up into lighter atoms and emit particles. If we want to try and unify these four forces, we need to develop a theory that will show how the universe started with one force and how this force broke into the four different forces we see around us today.

In the 19th century, a physicist named James Maxwell succeeded in uniting two seemingly different forces, the electric force and the magnetic force. He developed four equations that described the forces and their interrelationships, and showed how these two forces are created from the same charges (the positive and negative charge). His equations also predicted that there are waves traveling exactly at the speed of light that are created when these charges are accelerated. This is how we understood how light waves are actually formed. That is why today physicists talk about one electromagnetic force and light waves are called electromagnetic waves. To develop these equations Maxwell used a concept called a field, a concept invented by his teacher, the physicist Michael Farday. An electric field and a magnetic field are the effect that the charge has on its environment and as soon as another charge passes through this field it feels it and therefore feels that an electric or magnetic force is acting on it. When a charge is accelerated within such an electromagnetic field, it causes a wave in the field, this is the electromagnetic wave, the light wave (you can think of the accelerated charge passing through the electromagnetic field just like a hand moving back and forth in water and creating water waves around it). Note that although we do not see the field it is an existing and real physical entity with physical properties such as energy. We know about the existence of the field thanks to its interactions with other charges and thanks to the disturbances that the charges make in it. These interrelationships are for example the electromagnetic force and the disturbance in the field is the light wave.

By the way, Freddie had an answer that is good even today for those who ask what can be done with the discovery of the Higgs particle. He studied the electric and magnetic fields which were then considered strange and exotic phenomena. One day the British Prime Minister came to visit him in the laboratory. Farday showed him all kinds of cool demonstrations of electricity until finally the Prime Minister said to him - "Everything you showed me is very nice, but what can we do with it?" To this Farday replied "Don't worry, one day you will be able to tax that too." he was right.

After Faraday and Maxwell came Einstein at the beginning of the 20th century. Einstein opened the era of modern physics, he finished unifying the electromagnetic force, discovered that light waves can be described as particles he called photons, completely changed our perception of where we live, what space and time are, and what the force of gravity is and began the study of the entire universe - cosmology . After all these successes he tried to develop the unified field theory, a theory that would unite all forces in nature. He tried to do this without success until his death in 1955. The reason he couldn't do it is that he tried to unify only two of the forces, the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force. He ignored the two nuclear forces that were too new and were based on quantum theory (a theory that describes the behavior of elementary particles) which Einstein helped develop, but did not accept.

Only after physicists like Paul Dirk and Richard Feynman developed a new theory that succeeded in uniting quantum theory with part of relativity, a theory called quantum field theory and with the help of which they were able to explain the activity of the electromagnetic force and the two nuclear forces, it was possible to try and unify the forces. In 1970, physicists Sheldon Glashaw, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinber published a theory as part of quantum field theory that proposed how to unify two of the four forces, the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force, and therefore call this theory the electro-weak unification. The theory predicted the existence of four new particles that were unknown at the time. Is the electroweak union true? Have we managed to understand another secret of creation? In 1983, experimental physicists managed to find three of these four predicted particles and thus strengthen our confidence that the theory is indeed correct. The fourth particle left to discover was the same Higgs particle found yesterday. Now all the particles predicted by the electro-weak union theory have been found and it seems that we have indeed succeeded in moving towards Einstein's vision!

Physicist Abdus Salam has an interesting life story. He belongs to a poor family from Pakistan, but despite the financial hardship and the fear of lack, he did not give up his curiosity and sense of wonder and followed his heart to study theoretical physics. He is also a devout Muslim who often quotes from the Koran the call to "explore nature, reflect...and make the scientific enterprise an integral part of the community's life". It turns out that if you want, you can also interpret the Koran in a positive way.

In search of divine symmetry

Quantum field theory is the most successful physical theory we have developed to date, it manages to predict the results of experiments with an impressive accuracy of at least six digits after the decimal point. It is based on a combination of the concept of the field and the revolution and ideas presented by Einstein to physics. The most important idea that Einstein taught us is the importance of symmetry. Symmetry means that there is uniformity, things look the same even when we tried to change them. For example, a ball is rotationally symmetrical, no matter which way you try to rotate it, when you look at it, it will always look the same (assuming that there are no pictures of Winnie the Pooh drawn on it, for example...). The sphere has perfect symmetry, but there are many other types of symmetry and not all of them are perfect. For example, in the image of the snowflake, there is hexagonal symmetry. This is symmetry for rotations at angles of 60 degrees. Every time we try to change the image we see and rotate the crystal at angles related to sixty degrees, we will find that we repeatedly get an image that looks exactly like the original image. But this is not perfect symmetry, if we rotate the crystal at angles that are not related to sixty degrees, the symmetry will be destroyed and the image will not look exactly the same.

We value symmetry as a beautiful thing, for example we saw in experiments that the more symmetrical a human face is in terms of the left and right sides, the more beautiful we consider it. We can also talk about more abstract symmetries such as mathematical symmetries and there we will also appreciate them as a beautiful thing. For example the idea of ​​the unification of forces, if there is only one force that unites all four forces, then there is symmetry here, all the other forces should show the same, so that we see only one force. The four forces are sort of different rotations of the same unifying force. By analogy with the previous examples, it can be said that if the symmetry between the forces is perfect, then no matter in which direction we turn the unified force - towards the gravitational force or the electromagnetic force or the direction of the other forces, we will always see the same unifying force without any difference (according to the hypothesis this is the situation immediately after the big Bang).

If the symmetry is less than perfect, we can differentiate in certain rotations between some of the forces and we will not be able to differentiate between other forces (this situation corresponds to the universe that cooled a little after the big bang and as a result some of the forces split from the unified force, but other forces still remained symmetrical to each other and therefore it is impossible to differentiate between them). The more we break this symmetry, the more different the forces will become. Because we see great differences between the forces nowadays we understand that the symmetry between them has been broken. There are still remnants of symmetry between the forces, but their properties have diverged and diverged from each other until we notice four forces that seem different from each other. Therefore, a grand unifying theory should contain two parts, a part that shows how all the forces unite into one complete symmetry, and a second part how this symmetry is broken and we get the forces as we know them today. The electroweak union manages to do this to the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force. He shows how these two forces can be described by one symmetry and how this symmetry is broken so that the weak nuclear force acts only over short distances, while the electromagnetic force acts over any distance range. The breaking of this symmetry occurs due to the Higgs mechanism which gives masses to certain particles and not to others.

It is possible that symmetry will be broken to such an extent that we distinguish between different phenomena, but there will still remain some kind of symmetry in them, there will still be a feature that does not change between all these different phenomena. ZA that there is a common feature behind all phenomena that seem different and thus unites them, for example different phenomena that all have the same energy. Einstein realized that if we look for such symmetries we can unify seemingly different phenomena and find a single natural law to explain them. For example, in the example of the unification of forces, if there are only remnants of symmetry between the forces that we see today, then there is still a connection between them, there is some characteristic that is shared behind all the forces, and one can find one law of nature that describes how this characteristic links all the forces and how it is possible with the help of this shared symmetry to rotate between the forces the various What do all forces have in common? They all started from the same unified force, therefore it is possible to write a law of nature that describes the unified force and how all forces arise from it. When we rotate the unified force in a certain direction we get an electromagnetic force, when we rotate it in another direction we get the force of gravity and so on. Note that in such a case it is possible to distinguish between the different forces, but the forces do not stand on their own, they are just rotations of the unified force. They became equal to each other, we will rotate one power and reach another, we will rotate it and reach a third power and in another rotation we will reach a fourth power. There is no essential difference between them, they are all similar and represent different sides of the same unified force that breaks each time in a different way.

There is a beautiful symmetry here between all the forces. It is beautiful because with its help it is possible to unite things that initially seemed different into one source that explains everything. Abstract symmetries are also beautiful because of this unification of different phenomena into one common source. Symmetry represents perfection, it looks imperfect when there are many things scattered without any connection between them like a system that barely functions where things are connected patch by patch and many repairs are needed so that the system does not collapse (think of any bureaucratic system or the military as an example of such a situation). Compared to a symmetrical situation where everything is united with the help of one law that explains how all the details in the system connect to each other and influence each other in a kind of delicate and perfect dance. The harmony and symmetry between the different parts comes from their common source that links them.

For this reason, since ancient times philosophers tried to unite the various natural phenomena into one source and looked for symmetries in nature around them. Many of the ancient Greek philosophers saw the shapes of the circle and the sphere as perfect shapes because of their perfect symmetry and even worshiped them. Later, many religions moved from describing the world by many gods to describing the world by one central god, because of the same aspiration for a perfect symmetrical union. The idea progressed and developed, and nowadays when we study nature and discover the laws of nature that govern the universe, we look for the symmetries that will unite all natural phenomena under one law or under one theory that will explain everything. As a continuation of the name "The God Particle" we can say that we are looking for divine symmetry, the symmetry that will unite the multitude of phenomena into one complete theory that will explain what the reality is in which we live and from which we can also understand our place in the fabric of reality. This is an ambitious and fascinating goal and although we are still at the beginning of the road, there is already a lot of progress in understanding the reality around us and how different it is from what we thought and what we are used to in our day-to-day life. A well-known saying of Einstein reflects this goal - "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know what the Creator thought. The rest are details."

Albert Einstein didn't like the name relativity, a name the press gave his theory, he preferred it to be called something like the theory of fixed objects because he was looking for fixed laws of nature that were hidden behind symmetries. The connection to relativity is that when there are symmetrical things they are relative and equal to each other. In the union of forces for example, the forces are relative, they are just different rotations or different perspectives of the united force. Similarly, speeds of bodies are relative to the observer who measures them and as a result it is possible to unify them under one natural law that will explain the movement of all bodies at equal speeds. Einstein did exactly that in the special theory of relativity and as a result more and more symmetries were discovered to him, and he managed to unite many phenomena that at first glance seem different. He discovered for example that there is a kind of unification between space and time as well as between the concept of mass and the concept of energy.

When we try to investigate with the help of physics what the laws of nature are, we have to use mathematical language, it turns out that mathematics, and not words, is the one that manages to accurately describe and predict the laws of nature. When Einstein wrote down the appropriate mathematics for all these symmetries and the laws of nature derived from them, he was surprised to receive the most famous formula in physics: E=MC2 which means that mass is closely related to energy and it is possible to turn mass into energy and energy into mass (according to the formula a little mass is a huge amount of energy in the sun and in bombs An atom of a small part of the mass does become a large amount of energy)! It is said that after Einstein arrived at this formula he had a sort of nervous breakdown from excitement and stayed in his room for several days.

The strangest unification that arises from the theory of relativity is the unification of space-time and it has far-reaching consequences for the nature of the reality we live in. It seems that time is another dimension similar to the other three dimensions of space, as a result all the events that seem to us to be separated in time actually exist simultaneously along the time dimension. There is really no separation in our past, present and future. Our four-dimensional universe is a frozen universe, there is no change in it and all events happen at the same time! (For more, see Einstein - the man who began to take us out of the matrix (part 1)). It was the first time that a physical theory showed that reality is completely different from what we experience in our day-to-day life. Try to describe what it's like to live in a universe where when you look back in a certain direction you see the past and when you look forward you see the future. Sounds illusory and imaginary, but according to the theory of relativity this is the true state of our universe. We are not able to see the fourth dimension, the time dimension and therefore we do not see the world as it is. From this point on, the physical theories get further and further away from everyday life in an attempt to find out where we live and what are the laws of nature that govern the reality around us, and the physical research confirms every time anew the sentence - reality surpasses all imagination!

Quantum field theory and electroweak unification

In the theory of relativity, Einstein showed physicists the way to look for symmetries and laws of nature that unify seemingly disparate phenomena. He did try to continue looking for even greater symmetries that would continue to unify all forces under a theory of everything, but he was unable to meet this task. After the tremendous revolution he made in physics we are left with two great physical theories that explain different aspects of nature. The theory of relativity which explains the force of gravity and describes what happens at high speeds and on the other hand there is the quantum theory which describes the behavior of elementary particles at very small distances. These two teachings work very well and have withstood many tests, but they do not agree with each other and when you try to unite them you encounter problems that have not been able to solve to this day. A theory of everything must, obviously, succeed and unite these two teachings and this is the greatest challenge of physics nowadays.

But they did manage to make a little progress and unify part of relativity (the part called special relativity) with quantum theory. This theory is called quantum field theory and has elements from relativity with elements from quantum theory. The electroweak union, the one that predicted the existence of the Higgs particle, is actually a part of quantum field theory, so if you want to understand what the God particle is and how we move towards divine symmetry, you need to understand what quantum field theory is.

Quantum field theory continues Einstein's path towards a theory of everything by describing natural phenomena with the help of abstract symmetries, and succeeds in predicting the results of experiments in a very impressive way. In this theory, symmetries are described, with the help of the symmetries and with the help of their breaking they try to explain everything, the behavior of particles, the presence of forces, charges and masses. As the name implies, according to quantum field theory the most fundamental thing that exists is neither particles nor waves but fields. This is an extension of the field concept invented by Farday. Every force has a field that produces it and the particles of matter have a field that produces them (called a matter field). The field is in a certain area of ​​space (and time) and it determines how the particle passing through it behaves (like a sea ball that rises and falls due to water waves).

Because the field is constant and uniform and occupies a certain region, it can be used to impose symmetry on particles passing through that region. Suppose there is a certain law of nature, instead of it acting on each particle individually, it is possible to unify an entire region with the help of a suitable field so that every particle that passes through it behaves according to this law. In other words, the fields impose a certain law of nature and symmetry in an entire region in space and time. As an example, you can think of the sea water as a field, and as soon as there is a tsunami wave, everything in the sea will feel the massive tsunami wave. The water level of the sea will rise to a certain height during the tsunami and will force everything else in the sea to rise to the same height with it. All the things in the sea will suddenly behave symmetrically and rise to the same height. This is how the sea water during the tsunami behaved like a field that imposes symmetry on an entire region in space and time.

Note that the concept of the field corresponds to the picture of the world shown to us by the theory of relativity, we live in four dimensions in which it is meaningless to talk about change in time and the movement of particles, everything has already happened and everything will change at once (the so-called locked universe) and therefore the most basic thing cannot be a particle that appears to be changes with time but a uniform field in the four dimensional space-time.

The question immediately arises, how do we go from fixed fields in four dimensions to dynamic material particles and forces that work on the material particles, as we know them?

The answer is that according to quantum theory, which explains the behavior of elementary particles, there are no continuous things in nature, everything is discrete. We look at water for example, the flow seems continuous to us without spaces, but if we enlarge the image and look at the water flow with a microscope, we see that it is actually discrete and composed of small water molecules and there is a space between the molecules. In a similar way, quantum field theory shows that a field is also a discrete and discontinuous thing. How does this idea help us get particles?

Einstein started this idea of ​​quantum theory when he showed that energy is also a discrete quantity and not continuous. When we drive a car, it seems to us that energy is a continuous quantity, you can press the gas pedal, the car will get more energy and the speed will increase. The energy and speed we add to the car seems to be continuous. Einstein showed that this is not the case, and when we enlarge the image and look at the particles that make up matter, we see that the energy is also discrete. There is an energy particle that gives and removes energy between other particles. This particle can only be in specific amounts of energy, and the most amazing thing is that this energy particle is exactly what we call light. ZA that the light that we see as continuous is actually made up of energy particles which he called photons. This idea is so important that the name quantum theory comes from the word quanta which indicates a specific and discrete quantity. The photon for example is a quantum of energy.

Quantum theory quantizes everything, turning something continuous into something made up of discrete particles with discrete energy. There is a mathematical mechanism for doing this and as soon as it is applied to any field, discrete particles of that field are obtained. We start from a field with a certain energy and show that this energy comes in discrete portions which we call particles. If the energy portion of the particle is large enough, according to Einstein's formula, it will appear as mass. Thus we arrived at a discontinuous field composed of particles. It should be noted that the field precedes the particles and the particles formed in the field behave according to the symmetries and energy of the field.

Each force corresponds to its own field and therefore to each force corresponds its own particles that are created from the field. For example, when there are two electromagnetic charges (let's say positive and negative) they produce around them an electromagnetic field with appropriate symmetry and in which there are particles that transfer the electromagnetic force between the charges. We call these particles force-carrying particles (compared to material particles) and they are absorbed by the charges and thus the charges feel the force acting on them. It can be concluded that according to quantum field theory the forces are transferred between charges with the help of force-carrying particles.

One of the physicists who developed the quantum field theory, explained with it what the electromagnetic force is and predicted the existence of quarks is called Richard Feynman. He was a brilliant scientist and an interesting man. Like Einstein, he hated formality, knew how to give a good lecture and was witty, funny and modest. He loved adventures, both scientific and in ordinary life. At a certain point, for example, he decided to spend six months in Brazil. He taught at the university there, learned Portuguese very quickly and learned to play traditional Brazilian drums. Of course with his new knowledge he joined and performed with a band at the Rio Carnival. He also had a good answer to the question of why nature should be studied at all, "Physics is like sex. Sure, it can yield some practical results, but that's not why we're doing it."

After that, when he returned to the US, he solved a puzzle that was related to radioactive decay and the weak nuclear force. He said that at that time the local police already knew who he was.. It turns out that many times he would go to the neighborhood restaurant in the wee hours of the night. In the process he would continue to think about unsolved problems and sometimes when the calculations were complicated he would stop and stand still to focus on the calculation and sometimes he would wave his hands as he explained to himself what should be done with the calculation. The police would see a strange man in the middle of the night stop in the middle of the street and wave his hands. They would of course come to ask him who he was and what he was doing here. Only after a few times when Feynman explains to them that he lives here and goes to the neighborhood restaurant, they let him. How nice to hear about such people who love what they do with great passion without the artificial separation between work and leisure!

Just as there is a field that produces force-carrying particles, there is a field that produces the particles of matter (like the particles that make up the atom). With the help of all these fields and their quintet process we can explain all the particles known today and their behavior and even predict particles that were unknown, as happened with the three particles that carry the weak force and with the Higgs particle. This is how we arrive at the standard model which collects all these particles, the particles of matter and particles that carry the force.

Calibration symmetries and the Higgs mechanism

As Einstein understood, symmetries are the basis and laws of nature that impose symmetry can produce many phenomena. Therefore, in order to explain the various particles and forces in quantum field theory, the fields need to have different symmetries, in particular we are looking for when the energy of the field will remain symmetrical. ZA what actions can be done on the field and still the energy will not change. This is how you can find the equations of motion that describe the behavior of the various particles. In addition, the physicists discovered that it is possible to reach (almost) all the fundamental forces in nature with the help of a certain breaking of these energy symmetries. If you start from a certain symmetry and distort it a little, so that there is still symmetry but it is partial, a force appears that tries to restore the original perfect symmetry and this will be exactly one of the fundamental forces in nature. The idea is that the symmetry is distorted so that at each point the symmetry is slightly different. This dependence of symmetry on position and time distorts it, for example look at the following picture.

Round watches are photographed through a curved mirror. (The image was not copied for copyright reasons, you are welcome to view it through the link that opens in a new page)

The photographer David photographs a wall full of clocks through a curved mirror. As a result, all watches that have nice circular symmetry look non-round and non-symmetrical anymore. The original symmetry of the clocks has been distorted, all the circles appear to be smeared downwards. The distortion is created because of the curved mirror, the shape of the reflected watch depends on the distortion of the mirror that exists at each and every point of the mirror, each point spreads and moves the shape of the watch in a different way. ZA that the symmetry of the shape of the clock is broken because it depends on the distortion that exists at every point in the mirror. In the same way, it is possible to distort the symmetry of the energy of the fields so that it depends on each and every point and then to bring back the original symmetry a new field must be added (with new particles) and this field corresponds to one of the three fields of the fundamental forces in nature, the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force or The weak nuclear force. There is a suitable symmetry for each of these forces so that when you distort it by depending on place and time you get the force field and the corresponding force particles. This method is called calibration symmetry (we recalibrate the warped symmetry and get a force field).

This method works great for these three forces, but there was a problem. Because of the initial symmetry (even though it is distorted) all the added force particles are massless particles. But the weak nuclear force requires it to have force-carrying particles of great mass. The more mass a particle has, the heavier it is and the interactions it performs will only be with nearby particles, this situation corresponds to the weak force because it operates at very short distances. Therefore, it was necessary to understand how to further break the symmetry so that the symmetry between the force-carrying particles would also be broken and the particles of the weak nuclear force would have mass while the force particles of the other forces would remain massless.

Peter Higgs and two other physicists suggested a way to do this. The mechanism is called the Higgs mechanism. It starts from the distorted symmetry to reach the desired force and then breaks it, something called spontaneous symmetry breaking. Just like no one likes to work hard and if we have to spend a lot of energy then we will try to shorten the process and go to rest, this is how the particles also behave. We know how to show that particles will move in the lowest energy state they can find in (or in other words, in the lowest energy state their field can find in). Sometimes there is no choice and the lowest energy situation is itself a situation with a lot of energy. The particle will be in this state but any small change in state will cause the particle to move to a new state with lower energy. After the big bang, when the universe had high energy and temperature, this was the state of the various fields. All the force fields were very energetic, there was no difference between them and they were perfectly symmetrical. Therefore immediately after the big bang there was only a unified force.

After a certain cooling the fields could immediately drop to a much lower energy state (but still not zero). Following this decrease was the spontaneous breaking of symmetry and therefore the particles gained mass and the forces began to separate. The symmetry we started from permeates and also dictates how many minimum energy states the field has. Because of the symmetry, the field has several low-energy states to which it can fall, and all these states are symmetric to each other (Za having exactly the same low energy). The symmetry breaking occurred as soon as the field dropped to a certain low energy state and not to another state. Although the field has many low-energy states to choose from, it only descends to one of them. It can be said that the field chose only one state from all the states and thus the symmetry of all these states is broken (suddenly we chose only one of them. See graph).

So what did we have here? We started from some symmetry so that it is possible to perform operations on the energy of the fields and it is preserved, we distorted it to get different force fields and then with the help of the Higgs mechanism we broke the symmetry of the possible minimum energy states that the field has. As a result of this whole process we have fields of force and these fields have broken the symmetry and chosen a certain minimum energy. This energy is greater than zero and as a result of this new energy new particles are added to the field. One particle has energy around this minimum energy, this energy looks like mass to us and therefore this particle is massive with mass (in the graph it can be described as the red particle in state 2 which moves slightly up and down as if on a swing around the minimum energy it chose). This is the Higgs particle. Apart from it, other massless particles are formed (in the graph they can be described as a particle moving around the hill and passing through all the various minimum venergy states), they are swallowed up in the force field we started with and add mass to the force-carrying particles of the field. Thus, following the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the minimum energy states of the fields, the force particles have mass.

The whole idea of ​​the Higgs mechanism is that the states that the field can choose to reach a minimum energy, do not give it zero energy but energy that is different from zero. And when the field chooses one of these states, it broke the symmetry between the chosen state and the other states that correspond to the same minimum energy. Because of this refraction and the minimum energy that is greater than zero, new particles are obtained that change the mass balance. The Higgs mechanism can be activated on any field. If we apply it to fields of the weak force, we will get that the particles of the weak force have mass, as we wanted. In addition we will also get the Higgs particle. If we add the matter fields to our equations, we will find that they too have received mass. Thus, with the help of this spontaneous symmetry breaking, we were able to show how all the matter particles (quarks, electrons, etc.) got mass and how the weak force particles got mass as well.

The Higgs mechanism and the electroweak coupling have been known since the XNUMXs. In this union, we started from a common symmetry for two fields so that their energy does not change, we performed a calibration symmetry suitable for the weak force (we distorted the original symmetry so that the weak force appears) and thus out of the two fields appeared two particles charged with an electric charge that transmit the weak nuclear force and two more particles without an electric charge . One of them is a particle that also transmits the weak nuclear force and the last particle is the particle that transmits the electromagnetic force. This is how we united these two forces. After that, we performed the Higgs mechanism and received that the three particles that transmit the weak nuclear force gained mass, while the particle that transmits the electromagnetic force remained massless (and indeed we know that the particle that transmits the electromagnetic force is the same photon that Einstein described as a massless energy particle). In addition, we also received the Higgs particle that was created as a byproduct of the activation of the Higgs mechanism.

With all due respect to theory, symmetries and beautiful equations, without experimental results that support the theory, they are worthless, because in that case they do not describe the nature around us. That's why Richard Feynman said "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it does not agree with the experiment, it is wrong." There is always a little excitement when doing an experiment that is supposed to decide whether the theory is correct or not, although when Einstein was asked in 1919 before the results of an experiment that was supposed to test the theory of relativity, was he afraid, Einstein replied that he was not. When the journalists went on to ask him, what will happen if the experiment shows that the theory of relativity is wrong? Einstein smiled and replied then I will have mercy on God..

In the early eighties, new particle accelerators were built that could reach sufficiently high energies and find the three particles that carry the weak nuclear force. They did indeed find all three, two of which had an electric charge and one had no such charge, exactly as predicted by the theory of electroweak unification. But what about the Higgs particle? The theory also predicts its existence (due to the Higgs mechanism that is necessary for the electroweak union). As much as the discovery of the three particles of the weak force is an impressive discovery that strengthens the chance that the theory is correct, until they also find the Higgs particle, a cloud will hang over the correctness of the theory. To find it, it was necessary to build an even bigger and more impressive particle accelerator. We waited over twenty years until they finished building the LHC particle accelerator and only then could it be possible to reach sufficiently high energies from which the Higgs particle would be created. And here the day has come and the predicted Higgs particle has indeed been found!

In search of divine symmetry, and now what?

How do we move forward from here on in our search for the theory of everything? Amusingly, the discovery of the Higgs boson ended the role of the Standard Model and quantum field theory in its current form. We have probably reached the end of her capacity in terms of continuing to unite forces. Indeed, following the success of the electroweak unification, physicists tried to follow the same path and unify the strong nuclear force with the electroweak force, but this unification ran into problems. The most serious problem of the strong unification is that one of the predictions of the theory claims that the proton particle (which is made up of quarks and makes up the nucleus of the atom together with the neutron) should decay into lighter particles. Although it should take a very long time for it to decay, but if there are enough protons you can check this prediction and find a decaying proton. To date we have not been able to notice even one proton that has undergone decay.

Perhaps we should continue to look for such a disintegration and perhaps it is time to move to new and bold theories that go beyond the standard model. After all, nature always surprises us anew and reality is revealed to be an increasingly strange place. There are other problems with the standard model and quantum field theory. The main problem is that the theory fails to unify the force of gravity with the other forces, not only does it fail to unify them, it even fails to describe the force of gravity - gravity. When you try to quantize the gravitational field and remove particles carrying gravitational force from it, you reach illogical results of infinity. This is a hint that the theory is not good enough.

There are two main theories that go beyond the standard model and try to expand the symmetries to unify all the laws of nature under a theory of everything. One is called supersymmetry and the other is called string theory. String theory is currently the prime candidate to be the theory of everything. Mathematically, it succeeds in uniting all the forces of nature, including gravity and all particles. Of course this means that it is an even stranger theory than all the physical theories that have been proven to date, and among other things it claims that we live not in three dimensions of space and one dimension of time but in 11 dimensions... The problem is that it is very difficult to check whether it is correct. It has no direct predictions that can currently be tested in particle accelerators.

The role of the LHC particle accelerator was not limited only to the search and discovery of the Higgs particle. His more interesting goal is to try and now find evidence for the correctness of one of these theories. We are all waiting for an announcement from the team accelerating the discovery of new and exotic particles that have not been seen until now. Such particles will break the standard model and force us to continue expanding the existing theories, and perhaps one of these particles will fit the prediction of the supersymmetry theory. An even more revolutionary possibility would be to find indirect evidence of the existence of additional dimensions beyond the four known dimensions. Such evidence would be the first experimental finding that confirms string theory. There is definitely something to look forward to in the coming years and it seems that a revolution in physics is only a matter of time.

In our search for meaning and understanding of the reality around us, we have come to the conclusion that reality is very different from what we know as everyday reality. We began to reveal with the help of symmetries the basic laws of nature that create our world and our universe and we reached fascinating insights. Four-dimensional space-time is filled with symmetry fields from which matter is created. The material that seems to us to be the most basic thing there is is only a shadow of more basic essences, today it seems that this basic essence is an abstract, but real field of energy. The mass that seems to us such a tangible thing is another type of energy that we can measure and convert into other types of energy such as heat and light energy. And who knows? Maybe we even live in an 11-dimensional space?

What a strange world we live in! All these insights challenge our usual perceptions, such as what is this material that we are made of? It's not even the most basic thing there is. Will we ever be able to go through and describe the world using the true fundamental essences that make it up? Where will the continued search for the theory of everything, for the divine symmetry, lead us? You never know, what can be said is that the physical theories will continue to get weirder and weirder as we get deeper into understanding where we really are. We are standing on a small island of understanding, surrounded by a huge and perhaps endless sea of ​​mystery and we are slowly and determinedly managing to enlarge the shore and build bridges from it to all directions.

Strawberry fields forever - the beetles

These insights dwarf our daily lives, give perspective and inspire. We invest so much time and energy for nothing in fake competitions, ego wars and controlling others, shouldn't we instead invest our time in expanding the island and in expanding the understanding of what the real reality is that we live in and what is the potential inherent in us? Shouldn't we invest most of our resources and time in developing this potential and solving the riddle of existence?