The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World (54 page)

and resting value of Higgs field, 253–54

and supersymmetry, 260

visible light, 122

viXra log
(blog), 163–64

Wagner, Walter, 189–91

Waldgrave, William, 137

Ward, John, 233–34, 235–37

Ward identities, 233

Watts, Gordon, 2, 68

wave functions, 33–34, 42, 129

W bosons

and the Big Bang, 161

and connection fields, 153

and creation of Higgs bosons, 169

discovery of, 62, 237

effects of, 237

and Higgs decay modes, 170,
171,
172–73,
173,
187

and the Higgs mechanism, 224

and mass, 53, 145

and particle detector findings, 104, 180

and particle spin,
53,
283, 286, 288, 290

prediction of, 235

and Schwinger’s model, 231

and the strong nuclear force, 130

and supersymmetry, 258,
259,
260

and symmetry breaking, 156, 160

and weak interactions, 31–32, 229–30

and WIMPs, 248–49

Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), 247–48, 250, 261

weak nuclear force

bosons of, 31

and dark matter, 247–48

evolution of theory, 228–32,
230

experimental evidence for, 162

and fields, 31–32

and the hierarchy problem, 254

and the Higgs field, 34

and neutron decay, 47,
47

and particle spin, 291

and resting value of Higgs field, 140

and solar energy, 30

and the Standard model,
230,
235, 280

and symmetry, 36, 150–53, 158–60, 162, 213

and W and Z bosons, 31, 62, 162

and Yang-Mills theories, 156

Weinberg, Steven

and axions, 249

background, 234–35

Congressional testimony, 24

on funding for Big Science, 270–71

and Goldstone’s theorem, 217

Nobel Prize, 237

and origin of Higgs boson name, 238

and “A Theory of Leptons,” 235–37

and vacuum energy, 267

and weak interaction theory, 162

Weyl, Herman, 151

Wheeler, John, 33

Wigner, Eugene, 23

Wikipedia, 240

Wilczek, Frank, 30, 168–69, 249

Wilson, Robert, 67–68, 269–70

“WIMP miracle,” 248–49

Woit, Peter, 202

Wolf Prize in Physics, 240

working groups, 192–93

World Conference of Science Journalists, 198

World Data Center for Climate, 111

Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, 112–13

World Wide Web, 113, 274

Wu, Sau Lan, 64–65, 104, 202, 277

Yahia, Mohammed, 279

Yang, Chen Ning, 154–55, 158, 212–13

Yang-Mills model, 229–31

YouTube, 205–6

Z bosons

and the Big Bang, 161

and connection fields, 153

and creation of Higgs bosons, 169

discovery of, 62, 237

and electroweak unification, 233

and Higgs decay modes, 170,
171,
172,
173

and the Higgs mechanism, 224

and mass, 53, 145

and particle detectors, 96, 104, 180

and particle spin,
53,
283, 286, 288–89, 290

prediction of, 235, 237

and the strong nuclear force, 130

and supersymmetry, 258,
259,
260

and symmetry breaking, 156, 160

and the weak force, 31

and weak interactions, 162

and WIMPs, 248–49

Zweig, George, 50

Zwicky, Fritz, 244