Particles are everything?

[SaganWannaBeWannaBe]

Hi all, this looks like a great forum where semi-informed folks like myself can ask questions and not be ignored because we're not actually physicists.

 

So, it seems like everything boils down to particles. I watched a show today about the Higgs-Boson for example, and they explained that the LHC had enough energy to actually produce the HB. This makes it seem like there are these ultra tiny, fairly weird, but nevertheless locatable "things" that if we only had "god's eyes" so to speak we could physically see spinning, glowing, whatever.

 

Is this true? Or is the word "particle" just a handy term used to talk about a phenomena that really doesn't accord with our common notion of a particle. And if that's the case, what's really meant by saying the particle is observed in a collider?

 

Thanks!

[ajb]

Or is the word "particle" just a handy term used to talk about a phenomena that really doesn't accord with our common notion of a particle.

I would say that is correct. By particle in this context I would take that to mean a point-like quantum excitation of a field. Thinking of fundamental particles as tiny balls is not the right way to think.

 

And if that's the case, what's really meant by saying the particle is observed in a collider?

One usually looks at the momentum of particles as they curve in a magnetic field and their energy as the particles are slowed down. So we look for the properties of the particles rather than the "particles themselves".

 

You can find out more using wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_detector

[SaganWannaBeWannaBe]

I have a feeling the same can be said about things like "spin", "strings", etc. right?

[ajb]

I have a feeling the same can be said about things like "spin", "strings", etc. right?

Spin for sure, which you should not think of in terms of tiny spinning balls. Intrinsic angular momentum, or spin is an property of the particles themselves and not to be seen as something to do with a the dynamics.