Thread: The race is on
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Old 17-02-2009, 08:18 PM
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renormalised (Carl)
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Funny you should say that about the Higgs. If you look at supersymmetry, and how the Universe came to be, it was immediately after the Plancke Era (before 10^-43 seconds and 10^-33cms in size), that the Higgs particle flashed into existence. It was the Higgs particle that broke the false vacuum supersymmetrical state of the Universe and kicked off inflation. You can think of perfect supersymmetry as being like balancing yourself upside down on one fingertip. Everything is in balance, yet it's not a normal state of affairs to be in. It's a high energy state. It's broken when you eventually fall over. During the Plancke Era, all forces of nature....the weak and strong nuclear, electromagnetism and gravity were all one force. Everything was in that high energy state. When supersymmetry was broken, gravity "froze" out of the previous state and became separate from the other forces. It was the appearence of the Higgs which was probably the cause of this. Consequently, the universe underwent the period of rapid expansion known as inflation. You can read about this in any good textbook on quantum or particle physics. Or better yet, try and grab books by people such as Michio Kaku, Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking etc, that deal with this topic. They tend to write to a lay audience with these books and make things a little more readable and understandible than the textbooks.
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