Talk:Higgs boson

renaming the page
This page should be renamed Brout-Englert-Higgs boson to reflect the simultaneous discovery as recognized by the Nobel comitee npettiaux (talk) npettiaux (talk) 19:51, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I've not seen any sources that call it anything other than the Higgs boson or the "God particle". –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 22:19, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * @Npettiaux, as I said after I undid your move of Higgs mechanism, Wikipedia articles use the most commonly used name for a topic. See WP:COMMONNAME. You will need to provide evidence that Brout-Englert-Higgs boson is the term most commonly used. StarryGrandma (talk) 23:19, 2 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia uses the most common name, and that's "Higgs boson" (and "Higgs mechanism") without any doubt. See e.g. ATLAS and CMS. --mfb (talk) 11:59, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * As the article indicates, there were six names on the PRL paper. As well as I know, it is usual to name things, more generally than physics, after one or two people, but not more. Bose-Einstein statistics gives us boson, not bose-einsteinons. Someone once noted that successful presidential candidates have easy to pronounce names. It might be that Higgs was easier than the others. In any case, it is the WP:COMMMONNAME, whether it should be or not. Gah4 (talk) 00:33, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia uses the most common name, and that's "Higgs boson" (and "Higgs mechanism") without any doubt. See e.g. ATLAS and CMS. --mfb (talk) 11:59, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * As the article indicates, there were six names on the PRL paper. As well as I know, it is usual to name things, more generally than physics, after one or two people, but not more. Bose-Einstein statistics gives us boson, not bose-einsteinons. Someone once noted that successful presidential candidates have easy to pronounce names. It might be that Higgs was easier than the others. In any case, it is the WP:COMMMONNAME, whether it should be or not. Gah4 (talk) 00:33, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
 * As the article indicates, there were six names on the PRL paper. As well as I know, it is usual to name things, more generally than physics, after one or two people, but not more. Bose-Einstein statistics gives us boson, not bose-einsteinons. Someone once noted that successful presidential candidates have easy to pronounce names. It might be that Higgs was easier than the others. In any case, it is the WP:COMMMONNAME, whether it should be or not. Gah4 (talk) 00:33, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Good or featured article?
Hello everyone,

Is there any possibility for this page to be a good article, or a featured article maybe? The article seems fine, maybe even enough to be a good article. I don't know much about physics, therefore I just wanted to see the opinions of the Wikipedians on this article, and if possible, brainstorm if this article in a shape that is adequate for a nomination. Cheers, Harald the Bard (talk) 12:53, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Two points of semantics
In the 2nd paragraph of the section Higgs boson one can read: « In these kinds of theories ». This choice of expression is poor english and arguably wrong: it should be two singulars -counting the determiner+noun pair as a single expression- instead of two plurals. 1 "this kind", because there is only one kind of theory (the gauge invariant theories described in the 1st paragraph) and 2 "theory", because "theories" means "a set of theories", so a "kind of theories" is a set of sets of theories satisfying some property. But gauge invariance is a property of a theory (not of a set of theories).

I think the use of singular for the 1st expression, "this kind" instead of "these kinds", is consensual, so i will argue on the 2nd point. I know that it is customary in english to use "kind of apple" and "kind of apples" as exactly equivalent expressions but i argue that this is wrong. From a logical perspective plural refers to the set of all things with some property. For instance "natural numbers" refers to a model of Peano arithmetic, eg the set of standard natural numbers, $$\mathbb N=\{0,1,2,...\}$$, or a nonstandard model, which may contain nonstandard natural numbers. Thus "a kind of natural numbers" would be a set of models of PA (of given kind), while "a kind of natural number" would be a set of numbers. Therefore the practice of using both expressions equivalently is inconsistent, lacks logic, is due to poor education, and should be discouraged. In particular wikipedia should always favor "granny smith is a kind of apple", and here "In this kind of theory". I have not edited the page myself because my proposal may not gather consensus, but i'd be glad if senior editors welcome it.

One could argue that "a property of theories" and "a property of a theory" are equivalent, and that so should be "a kind of theories" and "a kind of theory". But i think not because a property is viewed and used as possessed by some thing, as an element of some thing. One says "a granny smith has the property of being green", but not "a granny smith has the kind of being green". In other words "property x of thing X" is manipulated as an element of X, while "kind x of X" is manipulated as the set of all things X with a given property. This is reflected in the fact that we can read "a property of theories" as an ellipse of "a property of some apples" -but "a kind of some apples" is never used and would not be readily interpreted by most people. Plm203 (talk) 14:19, 13 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Addendum: Reading the article further i found the expression « an unusual type of field », which follows the rules i proposed above -"type" being a synonym of "kind", with equivalent grammar. It thus appears that the expression « these kinds of theories » was not carefully decided, and i propose that we harmonize the language choice to two singulars. Plm203 (talk) 14:49, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

My understanding
is that the higgs boson is simply a quantum excitation of the higgs field; it is not a particle. The lead should reflect this. TheRealBalalaikaMaster (talk) 08:34, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
 * All particles are excitations of their corresponding fields. That's what "particle" means in quantum field theory. Nothing special about the Higgs. --mfb (talk) 08:45, 27 September 2023 (UTC)