‘They’ll find the God particle by summer.’ And Peter Higgs should know

Published on Saturday 25 February 2012

Peter Higgs, pictured at Edinburgh University

Renowned physicist Professor Peter Higgs gives a rare interview to Jenny Fyall as he receives the Edinburgh Award

THE fabled Higgs boson that will help explain the origins of the universe will be found this summer, the scientist who gave his name to the particle has predicted.

Professor Peter Higgs told The Scotsman he thought scientists at Cern working with the Large Hadron Collider would find evidence that the elusive particle exists within a matter of months.

The acclaimed 82-year-old theoretical physicist came up with the now famous theory in 1964 which provides an explanation for the origins of mass as a property of matter.

However, almost half a century later, the Higgs boson that is a fundamental part of the theory has still not been found.

“It’s found well enough to satisfy quite a few people but not well enough to satisfy the standards of Cern,” the professor said.

“The kind of certainty they want is where it becomes a few million to one against it being any other stray effect which might simulate it.

“It should be settled during the summer.”

He added: “To me it looks extremely promising at the moment but the experimentalists want it more cut and dried than it is at the moment.”

Prof Higgs was speaking ahead of a ceremony last night to present him with the prestigious Edinburgh Award for his contribution to the city.

When the Higgs boson, which has become known as the God Particle, is confirmed to exist, he said he would celebrate by opening a bottle of champagne.

Asked whether he was excited by the revelations in December last year that data from the Large Hadron Collider had provided the greatest hints yet that the Higgs boson may exist, he said: “From time to time yes. This is something I have lived with for a long time now. It is nearly 48 years since I did this work in 1964.”

However, Prof Higgs, who does not own a television, said he did not keep very closely up to date with latest developments at Cern, relying instead on his former colleagues to fill him in.

He had not heard the news, reported on Thursday, that an explanation had been found for the results of recent experiments at Cern that seemed to show particles called neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. It turned out a loose cable could have been responsible.

He said: “That’s a relief. It looked so surely like some sort of mistake but nobody knew where the mistake was.”

If the Higgs boson is confirmed to exist, Prof Higgs has been widely tipped to be in line for a Nobel Prize.

“I find it hard to imagine but it’s not recent news to me that it’s a possibility,” he said.

Asked how he deals with the attention of being linked to the Higgs boson, the Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh, who rarely gives interviews, said: “Since I’m getting older I find it an advantage that it takes me some time to walk to where my telephone is.”

And he suggested during yesterday’s interview that he thought it was unfair that his name alone had become linked to the particle. Several other scientists came up with similar theories at the same time.

He described how his name had been “plastered all over everything to do with the theory” and that this “neglected to give credit to the other people involved”. He added: “A lot of people have been involved in this in various ways. When it comes to publicity I think the publicity gets a bit biased sometimes.”

He revealed that rather than coming to him during a flash of inspiration during a walk in the Cairngorms in 1964, as commonly reported, the theory had actually been formulated in Edinburgh.

“It was probably somewhere in Edinburgh during a weekend in July,” he said. “It wasn’t a sort of eureka moment. It was a gradual realisation.”

Prof Higgs, who was born near Newcastle but settled in Edinburgh after falling in love with the city when he visited as a student, revealed to The Scotsman yesterday that by carrying out research into his family tree he had discovered that both his grandfather, James Coghill, and great-grandfather had also lived in the capital.

It turned out his great-grandfather, who was born in Caithness in 1805, was a spirit merchant on the Royal Mile next to what is now Deacon Brodie’s Tavern.

“I rather fell for the city the first time I saw it lit up at night,” he said. “There’s no other city in the UK like it.

He said he was “very pleased” to have been honoured with the Edinburgh Award.

“Edinburgh is my adopted home. It’s a place where I wanted to come and live and I managed to arrange my life so it happened.”

The physicist, who has two sons and two grandchildren who all live in Edinburgh, added that getting the award had cemented his feeling that he was now “part of the Edinburgh scene”, which he said had first been hinted to him when he discovered he featured in one of Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street novels. Prof Higgs is the fifth person to receive the Edinburgh Award, which is given to people who have made an outstanding contribution to the city.

He was presented with the Loving Cup at a ceremony last night and his handprints have been engraved in the stone in the City Chambers’ quadrangle.

The Rt Hon George Grubb, Lord Lieutenant and Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, said: “His proposal of what has now become known as the Higgs boson has not only significantly advanced our knowledge of particle physics, culminating in the Standard Model, but has also given him a huge international reputation.

“Professor Higgs’ work with the University of Edinburgh has put this city on an international stage and as such he is undoubtedly a most deserved recipient of one of Edinburgh’s most prestigious civic awards.”

And Alan Walker, honorary fellow of the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Particle Physics Experiment Group said: “This award is richly deserved, not only for the work that has led to worldwide acclaim, but for his inspiration of students, many of whom have gone on to do great things. Indeed, some are currently involved in the searches at the ATLAS detector for the Higgs boson.

“This is indeed a very proud day for both the university and the City of Edinburgh.”

The theory: Mass – and why it just disappears

Published on Saturday 25 February 2012

HIGGS became interested in what must be one of the most curious puzzles in physics: why the objects around us weigh anything.

Until recently, few even questioned where mass comes from.

Isaac Newton coined the term in 1687 in his famous tome, Principia Mathematica, and for 200 years scientists were happy to think of mass as simply existing.

Some objects had more mass than others – a brick versus a book, say – and that was that. But scientists now know the world is not so simple. While a brick weighs as much as the atoms inside it, according to the best theory physicists have – one that has passed decades of tests with flying colours – the basic building blocks inside atoms weigh nothing at all. As matter is broken down to ever smaller constituents, from molecules to atoms to quarks, mass appears to evaporate before our eyes.

Higgs came up with an elegant mechanism to solve the problem. It showed that at the very beginning of the universe, the smallest building blocks of nature were truly weightless, but became heavy a fraction of a second later, when the fireball of the big bang cooled. His theory was a breakthrough in itself, but something more profound dropped out of his calculations.

Higgs’s theory showed that mass was produced by a new type of field that clings to particles wherever they are, dragging on them and making the heavy. Some particles find the field more sticky than others. Particles of light are oblivious to it. Others have to wade through it like an elephant in tar. So, in theory, particles can weigh nothing, but as soon as they are in the field, they get heavy.

Detecting the field itself is thought to be impossible with modern technology, but Higgs also predicted a particle that is created in the field, and finding this would be the proof they sought.

Officially, the particle is called the Higgs boson, but its elusive nature and fundamental role led a prominent scientist to rename it the God particle.

• Extract from Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle by Ian Sample

Peter Higgs: Lecturer who fell in love with Scotland

Published on Saturday 25 February 2012

PETER Ware Higgs, now 82, was born in Wallsend, North Tyneside in May 1929.

He became enthralled as a schoolboy by Paul Dirac, Britain’s unsung hero of theoretical physics.

As a child he received some of his early schooling at home, partly due to his father’s job as a sound engineer for the BBC, which meant the family moved around a lot.

He graduated with a first-class honours degree in physics from King’s College London, as well as a masters and PhD.

In 1960 he took up a lecturing post at the University of Edinburgh, a city he had fallen in love with after he hitch-hiked to Scotland to go walking in the Highlands as a student.

Four years later, Prof Higgs carried out the work that has made him famous in the world of physics and resulted in his portrait hanging in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

At that time, no-one realised his research was important and in fact, the second paper he wrote about it was rejected as irrelevant by Europe’s leading journal for particle physics and he had to send it to a rival American journal, Physical Review Letters.

Two other scientists, Robert Brout and Francois Englert at the Free University of Brussels, came to the same conclusions at a similar time and it is said Prof Higgs can feel embarrassed that the particle bears his name. On occasion he has instead referred to it as the “boson named after me”.

He retired in 1996 and is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh.

He has two sons, Chris, a computer scientist, and Jonny, a jazz musician, and two grandchildren.

He has no television but spends his time walking in the Highlands, playing with his grandchildren, reading novels and enjoying classical music.

Confirmation of his place in Edinburgh society was established with a mention in Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street novels

The pioneer has already been awarded the Wolf Prize – considered to be the second most important prize in physics – but he refused to fly to Jerusalem to receive the award, because he is opposed to Israel’s actions in the Middle East.

The greatest prize is now in his sights. If the hunt for the God particle is successful, he is widely expected to be awarded the Nobel Prize.

Source: scotsman