Nominator's project description
| How do particles come by their mass? Thirty years ago, the Scottish physicist, Peter Higgs, put forward a theory which has held to this day. It postulates that the so-called Higgs field and the Higgs bosons are the producers of mass. The Higgs field is rather like a grid in which waves of miniscule particles, the Higgs bosons, flow. All the particles in the universe pass through this grid and, if they have any mass, react with it. Due to this interaction the particles' characteristics are formed. Particles without mass, on the other hand, traverse the grid unaffected. This was as far as the theory went. "Should I still be alive when a Higgs boson is found, perhaps in the year 2004, maybe I should like to be invited to the press conference", Peter Higgs said at the time. Whether it will still happen in 2004 is dubious, but Eckhard von Törne wants his work to make a contribution towards ensuring that Higgs does at least get his press conference in the next few years. He wants to construct silicium pixel detectors which should make it possible to produce proof of Higgs bosons in large particle accelerators. The technology developed in this way should lead to applications in fields other than particle physics, such as radiology. |
