Making any of these moves doesn't change the puzzle, always leaving it solvable. Together, they form what we call the symmetry group of the Rubik's cube. Since each move we make still leaves the Rubik's cube solvable, we can say that these moves are 'symmetries' of the Rubik's cube. If we take a Rubik's cube and scrambled it by making whatever moves we want, it is still possible to solve it. A symmetry also provides a rule for how something should always act unless acted on by an outside force.

This is due to the Higgs effect, which breaks the SU(2) symmetry (SU stands for special unitary, a type of matrix, and 2 refers to the size of the matrices involved).Ī symmetry of a system is an operation done to a system, such as rotation or displacement, that leaves the system fundamentally unchanged. However, the force-particles that mediate the weak force have mass. The effect was seen as finding a missing piece of the Standard Model.Īccording to gauge theory (the theory underlying the Standard Model), all force-carrying particles should be massless. In 2013 the Higgs boson, and implicitly the Higgs effect, were tentatively proven at the Large Hadron Collider (and the Higgs boson was discovered on July 4, 2012). In 1964, three teams wrote scientific papers which proposed related but different approaches to explain how mass could arise in local gauge theories. The Higgs effect was first theorized in 1964 by writers of the PRL symmetry breaking papers. Light that passes through it gains energy, not mass, because its wave form doesn't have mass, while its particle form constantly travels at light speed. This effect will transfer mass or energy to any particle that passes through it.

Giving mass to an object is referred to as the Higgs effect. If the Higgs field did not exist, particles would not have the mass required to attract one another, and would float around freely at light speed. Higgs bosons contain the relative mass in the form of energy and once the field has endowed a formerly massless particle, the particle in question will slow down as it has now become 'heavy'. Mass is, however, gained by particles via their Higgs field interactions with the Higgs Boson. Mass itself is not generated by the Higgs field the act of creating matter or energy from nothing would violate the laws of conservation. The result of a particle 'gaining' mass from the field is the prevention of its ability to travel at the speed of light. Particles that interact with the field are 'given' mass and, in a similar fashion to an object passing through a treacle (or molasses), will become slower as they pass through it. The field is accompanied by a fundamental particle known as the Higgs boson, which is used by the field to continuously interact with other particles, such as the electron.

The Higgs field is a field of energy that is thought to exist in every region of the universe. A computer-generated image of a Higgs interaction

Higgs field theory