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...Higgs, a shy British scientist in Edinburgh, introduced a theory that could explain how particles that carry two of the four forces - those that carry the electromagnetic force, and those that carry the weak force - came to have different masses as the universe cooled (in the moment after the Big Bang, of course, nothing had mass, existing instead in a sort of naked, ethereal beauty). Extrapolating from Higgs' theory, scientists were able to explain how all particles get their mass - which would explain, in turn, how everything in the universe, from scientists at CERN to the grand Jura Mountains that...
...works like this: Across the post-Big Bang universe, collections of Higgs bosons make up a pervasive Higgs field - which is theoretically where particles get mass. Moving particles through a Higgs field is like pulling a weightless pearl necklace through a jar of honey, except imagine that the honey is everywhere and the interaction is continuous. Some particles, such as photons, which are weightless particles of light, are able to cut through the sticky Higgs field without picking up mass. Other particles get bogged down, accumulating mass and becoming very heavy. Which is to say that even though the universe...
...find the Higgs boson is to create an environment that mimics the moment post-Big Bang. The powerful LHC runs at up to 7 trillion electron volts (TeV) and sends particles through temperatures colder than deep space at velocities approaching the speed of light. (The second most powerful particle accelerator, at Fermilab in Illinois, runs at 1 TeV.) The added juice allows scientists to get closer to the high energy that existed after the Big Bang. And high energies are needed, because the Higgs is thought to be quite heavy. (In Einstein's famous equation E=MC2, C represents...
...focused on the big picture that I was missing all these other opportunities to change the world at a more local level,” he recalled. “It’s important to realize what you do in your backyard has a really immediate impact...
...Cheung left the company—for which he had been promoted to Chief Information Officer—and moved to Boston, where he got involved with organizations like Big Brother Big Sister...