These interactions slow down the electron, and that’s what we mean by “mass.” When a left-handed electron bumps into a Higgs boson, the electron might ricochet off it in a new direction and become right-handed, then bump into another Higgs and become left-handed again, and so on. As a particle such as an electron moves through space, it constantly interacts with Higgs bosons - excitations of the Higgs field. Here’s a cartoon version of how this generation of mass works. (Note that the neutrino has mass, but its origin remains mysterious, since it derives from some mechanism other than the Higgs.)
When the Higgs field arose in the early universe, it joined left- and right-handed particles to each other, imbuing the particles at the same time with the property we call mass. The Higgs boson is the linchpin of the Standard Model and the key to why the double simplex arrangement makes sense. This event was marked by the sudden appearance of a field extending throughout space, known as the Higgs field, which is associated with a particle called the Higgs boson - the final piece of our puzzle. The weak and electromagnetic forces both descend from a single force that existed in the first moments of the universe, called the electroweak interaction.Īs the universe cooled, an event known as electroweak symmetry breaking split the forces in two. It’s no coincidence that the weak neutral interactions closely resemble the electromagnetic interactions. These are the up quark, which possesses two-thirds of a unit of electric charge, and the down quark, with an electric charge of −1/3. Let’s start with quarks, and in particular the two types of quarks that make up the protons and neutrons inside atomic nuclei. As other Standard Model visualizations have done, we elide antimatter, which would form a separate, inverted double simplex.) (Note that, for every kind of matter particle in nature, there is also an antimatter particle, which has the same mass but is opposite in every other way. Matter particles come in two main varieties, leptons and quarks. Let’s build up the double simplex from scratch. We have adopted Quigg’s scheme and made further modifications. He calls his scheme the “double simplex” representation, because the left-handed and right-handed particles of nature each form a simplex - a generalization of a triangle.
Quigg’s visual representation shows more of the Standard Model’s underlying order and structure.
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A New ApproachĬhris Quigg, a particle physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, has been thinking about how to visualize the Standard Model for decades, hoping that a more powerful visual representation would help familiarize people with the known particles of nature and prompt them to think about how these particles might fit into a larger, more complete theoretical framework. And the quadrants of the circle are misleading - implying, for instance, that the photon only couples to the particles it touches, which isn’t the case. While this visualization properly emphasizes the centrality of the Higgs boson - the linchpin of the Standard Model, for reasons explained below - the Higgs is placed next to the photon and gluon, even though in reality the Higgs doesn’t affect those particles. Most attempts are too simple, or they ignore important interconnections or are jumbled and overwhelming.Ĭonsider the most common visualization, which shows a periodic table of particles: Yet for a framework that encapsulates our best understanding of nature’s fundamental order, the Standard Model still lacks a coherent visualization. The Standard Model is missing a few puzzle pieces (conspicuously absent are the putative particles that make up dark matter, those that convey the force of gravity, and an explanation for the mass of neutrinos), but it provides an extremely accurate picture of almost all other observed phenomena. Together, the equations formed a succinct theory now known as the Standard Model of particle physics. In the 1970s, physicists developed a set of equations describing these particles and interactions. All of nature springs from a handful of components - the fundamental particles - that interact with one another in only a few different ways.
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