The Higgs Boson - Future experiments

One of the key features of modern thinking in particle physics is that at highenough temperatures (like those at the time of the Big Bang) the disparatefundamental forces we know today are all manifestations of a single force.

In today's cold universe, the electromagnetic force and the weak force, W and Zparticles, have mass. This restricts the force to short range, unlike magnetism whose range is infinite because photons have no mass.

Heavy W and Z particles have been incorporated tidily into the modern theory byProfessor Peter Higgs, whose ideas demand the existance of new particles. Thehunt for these particles will be one of the main thrusts of particle physicsresearch in years to come. RAL is involved with the design of experiments tofind them.