What is the Higgs boson?

John Ellis,theoretical physicist, answers the question "What is the Higgs boson?" in preparation for the press conference following the seminar on LHC 2012 results on the Higgs boson search, due on July 4 2012 at CERN. For more details: http://cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Re...

[video also available via https://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1458922]

• Category

  Science & Technology

[lolzomgz1337]

He literally said: "Let me give you an analogy..."

[Gustavo Diaz Jerez]

It bents because gravity distorts (curves) space itself. Light just follows the straightest path possible, the so-called geodesic. If gravity is null the geodesic is a straight line, so light travels in a straight line, in the vicinity of a black hole gravity is very strong, so spacetime is strongly curved, so much in fact that all world lines point to the black hole's singularity.

[vash1053]

Light doesn't bend; the space in which it propagates does. A black hole is a region of spacetime so distorted that you could say that every direction becomes "down". Gravity never reaches a zero-value either, so if you can see it, then you're experiencing some degree of gravity from it. Even if that value is infinitesimally small.

[JLR902]

I got your big mass right here!!!

[Valholm]

We all go Super Saiyan

[Tolga Kavi]

Michio Kaku, someone give this man a medal and some wine!

[Craig Harkey]

I need that t-shirt.

[Garrett Lee]

Okay, thank you for answering my question.

[twistedfocus100]

That is a sweet shirt!!

[proudargie]

But WHY does a topquark acquire mass when entering the Higgs field? The man doesn't tell us WHY. Since e=m.c2, m=e divided by c2. Well, the bossons are just energy. When the quark collide with bossons, it slows down its speed and those opposing energies (quark vs.bossoms) BECOME MASS, which is added to the quark. Look at the ecuations: if c2 diminishes, m increases! Why didn't he tell us THAT instead of giving bad examples in which the people on the snow KEEP ON HAVING THE SAME MASS?

[Garrett Lee]

Can somebody please explain to me why if light has no mass, then how is it bent by a black hole's gravitational pull?