2013年10月8日 星期二

希格斯場和希格斯粒子的存在/"沒有物理學家是孤島" François Englert and Peter Higgs Win Nobel Prize in Physics


紐約時報有篇"沒有物理學家是孤島" ---他們都必須充分合作來研究  所以諾貝爾獎等的頒發給某些人   而他們是否能反映某創新當時的真正情況 頗令人懷疑的ˊ
Op-Ed: No Physicist Is an Island
Science is an intensely collaborative pursuit, and prizes to individuals are rarely able to capture the full nuance of the historical reality. 


 諾貝爾物理獎 "上帝粒子"學者獲殊榮
2013年的諾貝爾物理學獎,8號由瑞典皇家學院宣佈,頒給發現所謂「上帝粒子」的兩位科學家。他們是英國愛丁堡大學的希格斯,以及比利時布魯塞爾自由大學的英格勒。

==聲音來源 諾貝爾物理獎得主 英格勒==
我非常非常開心,可以獲得這樣的認可與殊榮。

另一位得主希格斯,則是透過愛丁堡大學發表書面聲明,對於得獎表示相當的驚喜。

早在1964年,英格勒和希格斯跟其他4位學者,就先後提出理論,認為宇宙中存在一種機制,是讓粒子有質量的根源,而粒子和這種機制交互作用,必然會產生玻色子。為了表示對希格斯等人的尊崇,這種玻色子被命名為希格斯粒子,而讓粒子產生質量的機制,被稱為希格斯場。

歐洲核能研究所設在瑞士與法國交界的大型強子對撞機LHC,經過多年的延宕以及3年的實驗,在去年證實了希格斯粒子的存在,也就是證實希格斯等人提出的理論。

==歐洲核能研究所所長 霍耶爾==
是你們的努力才有這個獎,所以你們也該給自己鼓鼓掌!

學術界認為,希格斯場和希格斯粒子的存在,讓粒子構成宇宙物質有了明確的理論基礎,因此希格斯粒子又被媒體戲稱為上帝粒子。至於實驗證實希格斯粒子存在的 大型強子對撞機,在去年11月完成階段性任務後,已經從今年2月情人節當天開始停機,展開維修與升級,預計2015年重新運轉。

記者徐家仁報導
(2013-10-09 12:00)  中晝新聞

François Englert and Peter Higgs Win Nobel Prize in Physics

Scientists' Theory Confirmed by Detection of Higgs Boson Particle


Francois Englert and Peter Higgs received the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics for their work on the so-called Higgs mechanism. Gordon Kane, professor of physics at the University of Michigan, explains why their work is so important to our understanding of the universe. Photo: AP
Peter Higgs and François Englert shared the Nobel Prize in physics for independently proposing a particle, now known as the Higgs boson, that confers mass to all other particles and whose recent discovery stands as one of the seminal moments of modern science.
Nearly a half-century after predicting the existence of the particle, the pair's work was confirmed last year, in a nail-biting experiment undertaken at the atom-smashing machine built by the European particle physics laboratory at CERN in Switzerland. That July day, in a packed hall in Geneva, Drs. Higgs and Englert met for the first time.
After further analysis, physicists at the Geneva laboratory said earlier this year they are confident that the particle they had discovered was in fact the one Mr. Higgs and his colleagues had predicted.
François Englert and Peter Higgs won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics. They received the award for their work on the "Higgs mechanism," which was proposed in 1964 as a theory to explain how mass is conferred to elementary particles.
Though widely expected, the Nobel award is also a controversial one, partly because several other scientists—and CERN itself—can claim significant credit for work done on the boson. A Nobel Prize can be shared by a maximum of three people and isn't granted posthumously.
Dr. Englert, a Belgian who is 80 years old, published his landmark 1964 paper with colleague Robert Brout, who died in 2011. Other strong contenders were three scientists—Carl Hagen of the University of Rochester, Tom Kibble of Imperial College and Gerald Guralnik of Brown University—who published a very similar theory just a month after Dr. Higgs of the U.K. published his paper, which affixed his name to the fabled particle for posterity.
"I'd be lying if I said it doesn't sting a little" not to share in the prize, Dr. Guralnik, 77, said in a phone interview. "No matter what, [the Nobel committee] had a difficult time" in choosing the winners. But, he added, "we are amazed and delighted that our mathematical exercise turned out to play a huge part in describing how nature works."

Nobel Prize Winners

In a statement, Dr. Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, congratulated "all those who have contributed to the discovery of this new particle."
The Higgs boson explains a big puzzle about matter concerning why some objects in the universe such as the quark, a constituent of protons, possess mass, while others, such as the photon, a constituent of light, have only energy and zip around the universe unhindered.
Until this enigma was resolved, physicists couldn't properly explain why many things in the universe exist, from stars and planets to germs and people.

Nobel Science Winners

See which countries and academic institutions have had the most Nobel laureates.
Dr. Higgs and others explained away the problem by proposing a ghostlike field that pervades the universe—space, after all, is already filled with other invisible fields, such as the gravitational field and electromagnetic field.
The scientists' notion was that particles acquire mass only in contact with this field, which would become known as the Higgs field. How much mass they acquire depends on the type of particles they are. Some, like the photon, seem to ignore the field and don't acquire mass at all.
By contrast, electrons interact with the field. If the field were to disappear, the suddenly massless electrons would zoom away at the speed of light—and all matter would collapse.
"The Higgs field is always there," said Dr. Guralnik. "It slows down the particles and induces a mass to them."
The Higgs boson and its associated field neatly filled a potentially embarrassing hole in one of the most successful theories of physics, known as the standard model. But it was only a theory. It took half a century for the physicists' bold theoretical leap to be confirmed by experimental science.
Last year, hundreds of scientists assembled at CERN, and others tuned in to a live webcast, to hear a report on the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider. The quest for the elusive Higgs had involved some 6,000 scientists, cost millions of dollars and required billions of particle collisions. "I think we have it," said Rolf-Dieter Heur, CERN's director general.Dr. Higgs, now 84, received a round of applause when he entered the auditorium, and shed a tear on hearing the news. He was heartened that his main finding had been so concretely and dramatically confirmed.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
François Englert, left, spoke with Peter Higgs at a news conference on July 4, 2012, at European Organization for Nuclear Research offices in Meyrin near Geneva.
"It is an incredible thing that it has happened in my lifetime," he said.
"The miracle of the standard model is that it works so well," said Dr. Guralnik. "But we have many, many open questions, such as [the mystery] of how gravitational interactions occur."
The Nobel Prize in physics is seen as the most prestigious award of its kind, and comes with an 8 million Swedish kronor ($1.25 million) cash award. The winner is selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, after a process in which thousands of scientists world-wide are invited to name contenders.
—Niclas Rolander in Stockholm contributed to this article. Write to Gautam Naik at gautam.naik@wsj.com

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