The Higgs boson, the enigmatic particle that imparts mass to other particles, may have prevented our cosmos from imploding. And, as a wild new idea proposes, its features may be a clue that we exist in a multiverse of alternative worlds.
According to that hypothesis, in which different parts
of the universe have distinct sets of physical laws, only worlds with a
negligible Higgs boson would survive.
If the new model is correct, it implies the formation
of new particles, which explains why the strong force — which ultimately
prevents atoms from collapsing — appears to obey certain symmetries. And along
the road, it may shed light on the nature of dark matter - the enigmatic
element that comprises the majority of everything.
A tale of two Higgs
In 2012, the Large Hadron Collider accomplished a
really monumental feat: it discovered for the first time the Higgs boson, a
particle that had eluded researchers for decades. The Higgs boson is a
fundamental particle in the Standard Model; it imparts mass to other particles
and establishes a contrast between the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces.
However, along with the good news came some bad news.
The Higgs particle had a mass of 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), which was orders
of magnitude less than physicists had predicted.
To be clear, the framework used by physicists to
describe the zoo of subatomic particles, dubbed the Standard Model, does not
exactly predict the Higgs mass's value. To make the theory work, the number
must be experimentally determined. However, back-of-the-envelope simulations
led physicists to speculate that the Higgs would have an astronomical mass.
After the champagne was opened and the Nobel prizes were presented, the
following inquiry arose: Why does the Higgs have such a low mass?
In another, initially unconnected issue, the strong
force does not behave exactly as predicted by the Standard Model. Certain
symmetries exist in the mathematics used by physicists to describe high-energy
interactions. For instance, there is charge symmetry (change all the electric
charges in interaction and nothing changes), time symmetry (run a reaction
backward and nothing changes), and parity symmetry (flip an interaction around
to its mirror-image and nothing changes).
The strong force appears to obey the combined symmetry
of charge reversal and parity reversal in all experiments conducted to date.
However, the strong force's equations do not exhibit the same symmetry.
Although no known natural phenomenon should enforce that symmetry, nature
appears to do so. What is going on?
A matter of multiverses
Raffaele Tito D'Agnolo of the French Alternative
Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and Daniele Teresi of CERN
hypothesized that these two issues might be connected. They detailed their
solution to the twin conundrums in a paper published in January in the journal
Physical Review Letters.
Their response: That is how the universe was created.
They invoked the concept of the multiverse, which is
derived from the inflationary hypothesis. Inflation is the concept that during
the early days of the Big Bang, our universe experienced an accelerated period
of expansion, doubling in size every billionth of a second.
Although physicists are unsure of what caused
inflation or how it worked, one implication of the fundamental concept is that
our universe has never stopped inflating. Rather than that, what we refer to as
"our universe" is a tiny patch of a much larger cosmos that is
constantly and rapidly expanding and spawning new universes, much like foamy
suds in your bathtub.
Different parts of this "multiverse" will
have distinct Higgs mass values. The researchers discovered that universes with
a large Higgs mass end up crashing catastrophically before they can grow. Only
parts of the multiverse with low Higgs masses continue to expand at a stable
rate, resulting in the formation of galaxies, stars, planets, and eventually
high-energy particle colliders.
To create a multiverse with various Higgs masses, the
scientists needed to add two additional particles. These particles would
constitute new entrants into the Standard Model. These two new particles'
interactions determine the mass of the Higgs particle in different locations of
the multiverse.
Additionally, those two new particles are capable of
performing other functions.
Time for a test
The newly hypothesized particles alter the strong
force, thereby restoring nature's charge-parity symmetry. They would behave
similarly to an axion, another hypothetical particle created in an attempt to
explain the strong force's nature.
The new particles also play a role in the early
universe. They may still exist in the modern cosmos. If one of their masses is
sufficiently small, it may have avoided detection in our accelerator trials but
would still exist in space.
In other words, one of these new particles may be
accountable for dark matter, the invisible substance that accounts for more
than 85 percent of the universe's matter.
It's a daring proposal: resolving two of particle
physics' most perplexing problems while also explaining the nature of dark
matter.
Could a remedy truly be this straightforward? As
elegant as the theory is, it must still be tested. The model predicts a mass
range for dark matter, which might be determined by future experiments on the
quest for dark matter, such as the underground facility known as the Super
Cryogenic Dark Matter Search. Additionally, the theory predicts that the
neutron should have a slight but potentially detectable asymmetry in its
electric charges, contrary to the Standard Model's predictions.
Regrettably, we will have to wait. Each of these tests
will take years, if not decades, to conclusively exclude — or support — the
novel concept.
This article was originally published on Live Science.
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