Why are scientists looking for the Higgs boson’s closest friend? Premium

On June 27, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe reported the most precise value yet of the top quark’s mass, which is related by the Higgs field to whether our universe could quantum-tunnel itself out of existence.

Scientists at the world’s largest physics experiment have reported the most precise measurement yet of the most massive subatomic particle we know. The finding sounds esoteric but it wouldn’t be an understatement to say it has implications for the whole universe.

The Greek philosopher Empedocles surmised 2,400 years ago that matter could be broken up into smaller and smaller pieces until we’re left with air, earth, fire, and water. Since the early 20th century, physicists have broken up matter into smaller and smaller pieces to find many different subatomic particles instead — as many as to fill a zoo.

Rather than a ‘smaller’ particle, contemporary particle physicists are concerned with elusive particles.

More energetic particles often break down into ones with less energy. The greater the difference in energy between that of a particle and the products of its decay, the less time the particle exists in its original form and more quickly it breaks down. By the mass-energy equivalence, a more massive particle is also a more energetic particle. And the most massive particle scientists have found to date is the top quark.

It is 10-times heavier than a water molecule, about three-times as much as a copper atom, and 95% as much as a full caffeine molecule.

As a result, the top quark is so unstable that it could break up into lighter, more stable particles in less than 10−25 seconds.

The top quark’s mass is very important in physics. A particle’s mass is equal to the sum of masses contributed from multiple sources. An important source for all elementary particles is the Higgs field, which pervades the entire universe. A ‘field’ is like a sea of energy and excitations in the field are called particles. This way, for example, an excitation of the Higgs field is called the Higgs boson just as an electron can be considered to be an excitation of an ‘electron field’.