What happens if the higgs boson is not found

Finally, physicists believe they could find even more Higgs particles. One prominent theory holds that instead of one type of Higgs boson, there are five. Some of them are much heavier than the Higgs found in , which means the LHC may not have been powerful enough to create them. Until now. Those are all tantalizing possibilities. Still, the LHC's most intriguing results could come from seeing something that nobody predicted.

The Higgs discovered in happens to have a mass that is suspiciously compatible with a huge number of particle interactions. That could be a coincidence. Orhope beyond hopeit could lead to an underlying principle that physicists have missed until now. The end goal, as always, is to find a string that, when tugged, rings a clarion bell that draws physicists toward something new. Scientists are, once again, starting the clock on a nebulous waiting period.

Image: CERN. The Higgs boson Elementary particles gain their mass from a fundamental field associated with the Higgs boson. The Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism In the s, physicists realised that there are very close ties between two of the four fundamental forces — the weak force and the electromagnetic force.

The top event in the CMS experiment shows a decay into two photons dashed yellow lines and green towers. The Higgs boson explained How do the elementary particles get their mass? The Higgs boson: What makes it special? Feature article. The Higgs discovery explained. YouTube video series. Latest Related News. CERN experiments announce first indications o In this case, there would be no Higgs boson. The Higgs mechanism eliminates this nonsense from the theory at the same time that it explains how mass is acquired.

But the nonsensical prediction of the incomplete theory is actually very useful, because it allows us to determine the energy and collision rate needed by a particle accelerator to discover the true nature of the Higgs mechanism, whether by Higgs boson or dynamical symmetry breaking.

A central role in the LHC's search for the mechanism of mass generation is played by the W boson. The W boson is the massive force carrier of the weak nuclear force that causes radioactivity. Without the Higgs mechanism the incomplete theory predicts that the collision rate for two W bosons to collide increases without limit as their energy increases.

In both cases the force that arrests the growth of the collision rate is also responsible for generating the W boson mass. The Higgs boson is expected to have a mass below 1 TeV one trillion electron-volts and will stop the growth of the WW collision rate at an energy equal to its mass, that is, at the same energy at which it can be produced.

A collision rate near the maximum is called "strong WW scattering", while a lower collision rate denotes "weak scattering" "scattering" refers to the collision of two W bosons. If strong WW scattering occurs, then additional W boson pairs are produced at very high energy.

If we are able to detect the additional W boson pairs that are the signal of strong WW scattering, we can determine by the presence or absence of the signal, whether the Higgs mechanism is implemented by a Higgs boson or dynamically.