HIGGS BOSON

Higgs boson, also called Higgs particle,  hypothetical particle that is postulated to be

the carrier particle, or boson, of the Higgs field, a theoretical field that permeates space and
endows all elementary subatomic particles with mass through its interactions with them.
The field and the particle—named after Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, one of the
physicists who first proposed this mechanism—provide a testable hypothesis for the origin of
mass in elementary particles. In popular culture, the Higgs boson is often called the “God
particle,” after the title of Nobel physicist Leon Lederman’s The God Particle: If the Universe Is
the Answer, What Is the Question?(1993), which contained the author’s assertion that the
discovery of the particle is crucial to a final understanding of the structure of matter.
The Higgs field is different from other fundamental fields—such as the electromagnetic field—
that underlie the basic forces between particles. First, it is a scalar field—i.e., it has magnitude
but no direction. This implies that its carrier, the Higgs boson, has an intrinsic angular
momentum, or spin, of 0, unlike the carriers of the force fields, which have spin. Second, the
Higgs field has the unusual property that its energy is higher when the field is zero than when it
is nonzero. The elementary particles therefore acquired their masses through interactions with a
nonzero Higgs field only when the universe cooled and became less energetic in the aftermath of
the big bang (the hypothetical primal explosion in which the universe originated). The variety of
masses characterizing the elementary subatomic particles arises because different particles have
different strengths of interaction with the Higgs field.
The Higgs mechanism has a key role in the electroweak theory, which unifies interactions via
theweak force and the electromagnetic force. It explains why the carriers of the weak force,
the W particles and the Z particles, are heavy while the carrier of the electromagnetic force,
the photon, has a mass of zero. Experimental evidence for the Higgs boson would be a direct
indication for the existence of the Higgs field. It is also possible that there is more than one type
of Higgs boson. Experiments searched for the massive Higgs boson at the highest-
energy particle-acceleratorcolliders, in particular the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear
Research). On July 4, 2012, scientists at the LHC announced that they had detected an interesting
signal that was likely from a Higgs boson with a mass of 125–126 gigaelectron
volts (billion electron volts; GeV). Further data would be needed to definitively confirm those
observations.
 GOD PARTICLE

One of the most important discoveries in particle physics of the last 25 years has possibly
just been made by experimentalists at CERN, the giant laboratory just outside of Geneva on the
border of Switzerland and France. Scientists there think that they have discovered the Higgs
field, also nicknamed the "God particle" by Nobel laureate Leon Lederman who wrote a book
with that title. If the result is verified, the Higgs will have a mass about 125 times the mass of the
proton, making it as heavy as a medium-sized nucleus, and it will "fill in" the last missing piece
of a puzzle involving the solution of one of the great outstanding problems in physics of the 20th
century: the origin of all mass. If the properties of the Higgs are confirmed, the picture of
fundamental particle forces will have been completed. That picture is known as The Standard
Model.

      The Standard Model of particle physics provides a description of microscopic matter and
their fundamental interactions. All matter is comprised of quarks and leptons. Three quarks bind
to form the proton and neutron. The neutrons and protons stick together to form nuclei – the tiny,
heavy central "hearts" of atoms. Leptons appear in nature in two types: electrically charged and
neutral. Neutral leptons are called neutrinos and hardly interact with matter at all. There are three
known charged leptons, the lightest of which is the electron. Electrons, which are negatively
charged, are attracted to nuclei, which are positively charged, to form atoms. A good pictorial
representation of an atom is a cloud of electrons swarming around a tiny nucleus, much the way
bees might swarm around a queen who has left her hive. Since atoms make up everything in the
world, quarks and leptons are the fundamental building blocks of nature.

      There are three fundamental forces. The most familiar is gravity, which holds humans
and other objects to the Earth, makes the Moon go around the Earth thereby leading to tides,
lunar phases and eclipses, and causes the Earth to orbit the Sun thereby leading to seasons.
Gravity is generated by objects with mass. But because gravity is such a weak force, only bodies
of huge mass, such as the Earth and Sun, create a significant effect. In the subatomic world,
where protons, neutrons and electrons are extremely light, gravity plays no role.

      The second fundamental force is a combination of three forces previously thought to be
independent of one another: magnetism, the electric force and the weak subnuclear interaction.
The unification of the electric and magnetic forces was achieved in the 19th century, leading to
electromagnetism. The electromagnetic force is the source for all macroscopic forces except
those created by gravity. Friction, spring forces, air pressure, the forces in collisions, and so on,
originate from the electromagnetic force. The weak subnuclear interaction is responsible for
certain decays of nuclei and plays a role in generating the energy of the Sun and other stars in
their cores. As its name implies, it operates at distances smaller than a nucleus and it is very
weak. For this reason, it is difficult to observe. At the end of the 1960's, a theory was proposed
that unified the weak subnuclear force with electromagnetism. Experiments in the 1970's and
1980's confirmed the electroweak theory. In 1979, Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow and
Abdus Salam received the Nobel Prize in physics for unifying the weak subnuclear interaction
with electromagnetism.
      The third fundamental force is called the strong nuclear force. It binds three quarks
together to from the proton and the neutron. It is also responsible for causing protons and
neutrons to stick to one another in a nucleus.

      One of the key ideas in physics is that the basic particle forces are generated through the
exchange of vector gauge bosons. These are particles that spin with one fundamental unit and
incorporate an enormous amount of symmetry. The electromagnetic force is generated when
charged particles exchange photons (spin one particles of "light"), the weak subnuclear
interactions are generated by exchanging heavy vector bosons known as W's and Z, while the
strong force is produced by eight gluons.

      The fundamental constituents – quarks and leptons – along with the two fundamental
particle interactions – the electroweak interaction and the strong nuclear force constitute The
Standard Model of particle physics. Gravity has not been yet incorporated because a good
quantum theory of gravitation is not available.

      It would seem that scientists know everything there is to know about microscopic matter
and its interactions. However, one aspect of The Standard Model has remained a mystery: the
mechanism that produces fundamental mass. The weak subnuclear interactions are feeble and
short-ranged because the W and Z have very heavy masses of 90 - 100 times the mass of a
proton. In contrast, the photon is massless. It is this great mass difference that makes
electromagnetism so different from the weak subnuclear force. How are masses for the W and Z
created? During the past 30 years, theorists have proposed various mechanisms, of which only
experiment can decide which is correct. One way to give masses to the W and Z is to use
particles known as Higgs fields. Four such particles are needed. Three are absorbed by the W and
Z and one is left over. In this mechanism, there should be one spin zero, electrically neutral
particle observed in nature. This is the "God particle," the Higgs particle. The potential break-
through discovery at CERN suggests that W and Z masses are created by the Higgs mechanism.
The positively charged W, the negatively charged W and the neutral Z obtain mass by
respectively absorbing positively charged, negatively charged and neutral Higgses.

      The Higgs field also has the ability to generate masses for the quarks and leptons. Thus,
if the expected properties of the Higgs field are confirmed, then the origin of all mass will be
understood.

      The generation of mass proceeds through a process known as spontaneous symmetry
breaking. An object has symmetry if rotating it does not change its appearance. For example, if a
rod is rotated as indicated in Figure A, its appearance is unchanged. A sphere has even more
symmetry than a rod because a sphere can be rotated in many ways without changing its shape.
 Figure A

      Spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs when a system or object naturally looses its
rotational invariance. Suppose pressure is exerted on the rod; say by pushing on it with a finger.
Then, if sufficient force is applied, the rod will buckle. See Figure B. When a buckled rod is
rotated, one can tell that it has been rotated; thus, the symmetry has been broken.

Figure B

      By the way, if the force is exerted exactly along the axis of the rod from the top, one
might think that it is impossible for the rod to buckle in a particular direction. However, the
buckling WILL occur but the direction is unpredictable. This is a feature of spontaneous
symmetry breaking. The breaking takes place but one does not know in which direction.

      The Higgs field thus acts as the finger in Figure B, applying pressure to the system to
cause it to buckle and loose its symmetry. It is a deep result of quantum field theory that when
this happens that the W and Z, which are messengers of the symmetries broken by the Higgs,
acquire masses. In other words, without spontaneous symmetry breaking the W and Z would be
massless.

      The Higgs field produces masses for the quarks and the electrically charged leptons
through its interactions with these fields. These masses are proportional to the strength with
which the Higgs couples to the particles. Because the Higgs interacts most strongly with the top
quark, the top quark weighs the most (about 200 times the mass of a proton). The electron
interacts very weakly with the Higgs and that is why it is the lightest particle (about 2000 times
lighter than a proton). Physicists do not understand why the Higgs couplings differ so greatly, so
that even if the CERN experiment is confirmed and the Higgs mechanism is realized, certain
features of the Standard Model will remain a mystery.

      So if one of the most important scientific discoveries has been made, why has there been
so little news about it? The answer is that because of its great importance, experimentalists must
be sure of the result before announcing it. There are four experimental detectors at CERN. Of
these four, only Aleph is seeing convincing evidence of Higgs production. That detector sees
three Higgs-candidate events. Another detector, Delphi, also thinks that it has produced one
Higgs in a single positron-electron collision. Although Aleph states that the Higgs has been seen
with better than 99% confidence, no strong claims can be made with so few events. CERN has
decided to run its LEP experiment an extra month or so to try to produce more Higgs particles. If
successful, an important announcement on the Higgs discovery will be made near the end of this
year. 
 PETER WARE HIGGS
He is best known for his 1960s proposal of broken symmetry in electroweak theory,
explaining the origin of mass of elementary particles in general and of the W and Z bosons in
particular. This so-called Higgs mechanism, which was proposed by several physicists besides
Higgs at about the same time, predicts the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson (which
was often described as "the most sought-after particle in modern physics" CERN announced on 4
July 2012 that they had experimentally established the existence of a Higgs-like boson, but
further work is needed to analyses its properties and see if it has the properties expected from
the Standard Model Higgs boson. The Higgs mechanism is generally accepted as an important
ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics, without which particles would have no
mass.
Higgs has been honored with a number of awards in recognition of his work, including
the 1997 Dirac Medal and Prize for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics from
the Institute of Physics, the 1997 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize by the European
Physical Society, the 2004 Wolf Prize in Physics, and the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical
Particle Physics. The recent discovery of the Higgs boson prompted fellow physicist Stephen
Hawking to note that he thought that Higgs should receive the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics for
his work.

Early life and education

Higgs was born in Wallsend, North Tyneside, England. His father worked as a sound

engineer for the BBC, and as a result of childhood asthma, together with the family moving
around because of his father's job and later World War II, Higgs missed some early schooling
and was taught at home. When his father relocated to Bedford, Higgs stayed behind with his
mother in Bristol, and was largely raised there. He attended Cotham Grammar School, where he
was inspired by the work of one of the school's alumni, Paul Dirac, a founder of the field
of quantum mechanics.
At the age of 17 Higgs moved to City of London School, where he specialized in
mathematics, then to King's College London where he graduated with a first class honours in
Physics, and later achieved a master's degree, and a Ph.D. He became a Senior Research Fellow
at the University of Edinburgh, then held various posts at University College
London and Imperial College London before becoming a temporary lecturer in Mathematics
at University College London. He returned to the University of Edinburgh in 1960 to take up the
post of Lecturer at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics, allowing him to settle in the city he
had become taken with while hitchhiking to the Highlands as a student in 1949.
Higgs was promoted to a personal chair of Theoretical Physics at Edinburgh in 1980. He
became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1983, was awarded the Rutherford Medal and Prize in
1984, and became a fellow of the Institute of Physics in 1991. He retired in 1996 and
became Emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh. In 2008 he received an Honorary
Fellowship from Swansea University for his work in particle physics.
Work in theoretical physics
At Edinburgh Higgs first became interested in mass, developing the idea that particles
were massless when the universe began, acquiring mass a fraction of a second later as a result of
interacting with a theoretical field (which became known as the Higgs field). Higgs postulated
that this field permeates space, giving all elementary subatomic particles that interact with it their
mass.
While the Higgs field is postulated to confer mass on quarks and leptons, it causes only a
tiny portion of the masses of other subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons. In these,
gluons that bind quarks together confer most of the particle mass.
The original basis of Higgs' work came from the Japanese-born theorist and Nobel
Prize winner Yoichiro Nambu from the University of Chicago. Professor Nambu had proposed a
theory known as spontaneous symmetry breaking based on what was known to happen
in superconductivity in condensed matter; however, the theory predicted massless particles
(the Goldstone's theorem), a clearly incorrect prediction.
Higgs "flash of inspiration" came while walking in the Cairngorms in 1964 and he wrote
a short paper exploiting a loophole in Goldstone's theorem and published it in Physics Letters, a
European physics journal edited at CERN, inSwitzerland, later that year.
Higgs wrote a second paper describing a theoretical model (now called the Higgs
mechanism), but the paper was rejected (the editors of Physics Letters judged it "of no obvious
relevance to physics"). Higgs wrote an extra paragraph and sent his paper to Physical Review
Letters, another leading physics journal, which published it later that year. Other
physicists, Robert Brout and Francois Englert[19] and Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen and Tom
Kibble had reached similar conclusions about the same time. In the published version Higgs
quotes Brout and Englert and the third paper quotes the previous ones. The three papers written
on this boson discovery by Higgs, Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble, Brout, and Englert were each
recognized as milestone papers by Physical Review Letters 50th anniversary celebration. While
each of these famous papers took similar approaches, the contributions and differences between
the 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers are noteworthy. The mechanism had been proposed in
1962 by Philip Anderson.
On 13 December 2011, CERN reported that two independent experiments at the Large
Hadron Collider had seen "tantalising hints" of the existence of the Higgs boson.
On 4 July 2012, CERN announced the ATLAS and CMS experiments had seen strong
indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson, in the mass
region around 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). Speaking at the seminar in Geneva, Higgs
commented "It's really an incredible thing that it's happened in my lifetime."

Civic award
Higgs was the recipient of the Edinburgh Award for 2011. He is the fifth person to
receive the Award, which was established in 2007 by the City of Edinburgh Council to honour
an outstanding individual who has made a positive impact on the city and gained national and
international recognition for Edinburgh.
Higgs was presented with an engraved loving cup by the Rt Hon George Grubb, Lord Provost of
Edinburgh, in a ceremony held at the City Chambers on Friday 24 February 2012. The event also
marked the unveiling of his handprints in the City Chambers quadrangle, where they had been
engraved in Caithness stone alongside those of previous Edinburgh Award recipients.

Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics

On 6 July 2012, Edinburgh University announced that a new centre named after Professor
Higgs is to support future research in theoretical physics. The Higgs Centre for Theoretical
Physics will bring together scientists from around the world to seek an even deeper
understanding of how the universe works. It will be based within the James Clerk Maxwell
Building.
The university will also establish a chair in the name of Peter Higgs.

Cultural references

A portrait of Higgs was painted by Ken Currie in 2008.  Commissioned by the University
of Edinburghit was unveiled on 3 April 2009[33] and hangs in the entrance of the James Clerk
Maxwell Building of the School of Physics and Astronomy and the School of Mathematics.

Political and religious views

Higgs was an activist in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) while in London

and later in Edinburgh, but resigned his membership when the group extended its remit from
campaigning against nuclear weapons to campaigning against nuclear power too. He was a
Greenpeace member until the group opposed genetically modified organisms.
Higgs was awarded the 2004 Wolf Prize in Physics (sharing it with Brout and Englert),
but he refused to fly to Jerusalem to receive the award because it was a state occasion attended
by the then president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, and Higgs is opposed to Israel's actions in
Palestine
Higgs is an atheist, and is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God
particle",as he believes the term "might offend people who are religious". Usually this nickname
for the Higgs boson is attributed to Leon Lederman, the author of the book The God Particle: If
the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?, but the name is the result of the insistence of
Lederman's publisher: Lederman had originally intended to refer to it as the "goddamn particle".

Family life

Higgs has two sons — Chris, a computer scientist, and Jonny, a jazz musician. He also has two
grandchildren, and all live in Edinburgh.
 ENTEROVIRUS 71 INFECTION

Causative agent

Enterovirus 71 (EV71) is a single stranded, RNA virus and one of the causative agents for hand,
foot and mouth disease (HFMD). The disease occurs commonly in Southeast Asian areas,
especially in summer and early autumn. Large outbreaks have been reported in Taiwan and
Malaysia in 1990s.

Clinical features

EV71 infection is usually found among young children. It most commonly presents with
symptoms of HFMD, characterised by fever, sores in the mouth, and a rash with blisters. Usually
it begins with fever, poor appetite, malaise and sore throat. One to two days later, painful sores
develop in the mouth. The sores are characterised by small red spots with blisters which then
often become ulcers. They are usually located on the tongue, gums, and inside of the cheeks. The
non-itchy skin rash manifests as flat or raised red spots. The rash is usually found on the palms
of the hands and soles of the feet. Asymptomatic infections can occur. Rarely, EV71 may cause
more serious diseases, such as viral (aseptic) meningitis, encephalitis, poliomyelitis-like
paralysis and myocarditis.

Mode of transmission

EV71 infection is transmitted from person to person by direct contact with nose and throat
discharges, saliva, fluid from blisters, or the stool of infected persons. The illness is contagious
during the acute stage and perhaps longer, as faecal shedding of virus can be detected for several
weeks.

Incubation period

The incubation period ranges from 3 to 7 days.

Management

Currently, no specific treatment is available for EV71 infection. Some symptomatic treatments
can relief fever and pain from the ulcers. In most cases, the illness is self-limiting. Symptoms
including fever, rash and ulcers subside spontaneously in one week. Parents should pay attention
to the health of their children and seek medical advice if their children having HFMD developing
the following symptoms:

 Persistent and high fever;

 Repeated vomiting;
 Persistent sleepiness or drowsiness;
 Myoclonic jerks or sudden limb weakness.
Infected children should refrain from schools or group activities such as parties, interest classes,
swimming until two weeks after fever has subsided and all the vesicular lesions have dried and
crusted to prevent the spread of disease. Protect other family members, especially children, from
getting the infection through strict personal and environmental hygiene (see advice on prevention
below).

Prevention

Vaccine is not available at the moment. Good personal and environmental hygienic are the most
important measures to prevent EV71 infection. While in Hong Kong or during travel, members
of the public are advised to:--

 Wash hands before eating and after going to toilet, managing vomitus or changing
diapers;
 Cover nose and mouth while sneezing or coughing, and proper disposal of nasal and
mouth discharge;
 Never share personal items such as towels and eating utensils;
 Maintain good ventilation;
 Clean and disinfect frequently touched surface, furniture and toilets regularly with diluted
bleach of 1:99 concentration (mixing 1 part of 5.25% household bleach with 99 parts of
water);
 Disinfect toys/places which are contaminated by secretions or excreta with diluted
household bleach of 1:49 concentration;
 Avoid close contact with HFMD patients.

ENTEROVIRUS 71 (HAND, FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE HFMD)

Enterovirus 71 or HFMD regularly reapperas in various Provinces in China, usually during

Spring season (last appearance: April 2010 and April 2009).
Infectious agent: Enterovirus 71 is one of the more than 90 enterovirus serotypes that have been
identified up to date. It belongs to the family of the Picornaviridae, genus Enteroviridae.
Poliovirus belongs to the same family and genus.

Reservoir: Humans function as the reservoir. Clinical presentation: After an incubation period of
3 to 7 days, symptoms start with fever, and general malaise. After 2 days, this is followed by the
development of sores (blisters, ulcers) on the tongue, gums and inside the cheeks and a skin rash
on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. Symptoms usually disappear after a week to
10 days. Young children are the most affected. A large proportion, more than two thirds of
enterovirus 71 infected cases remain asymptomatic. 

While enterovirus 71 infections are most frequently self-limited febrile diseases, they may cause
severe neurological disease, including viral (aseptic) meningitis, encephalitis or acute flaccid
paralysis. As illustrated during a recent large outbreak in Taiwan, death may occur, mainly in
children below three years, as well as long-term neurological sequelae.
Transmission modes: Enterovirus 71 is mainly transmitted through direct contact with nose and
throat discharges, fluid from the blisters, saliva or through faeco-oral route. In case of respiratory
illness, transmission through droplets may also occur. There is no evidence of food- or water-
borne transmission. 

Epidemiology: Enterovirus 71 was first isolated in the United States in 1969, and is distributed
worldwide. Related outbreaks may be small, with occasional fatalities, or more severe with a
high case-fatality ratio. In Europe, such severe outbreaks have been reported in Bulgaria in 1975
with 44 deaths and in Hungary in 1978 with 45 deaths. More recently, severe outbreaks were
reported from Malaysia (1997), Taiwan (1998, 1999, 2001) and Singapore (2000). In the 1998
outbreak in Taiwan, at least 130,000 cases were reported, with 78 deaths.
It is not known why the virulence and communicability of enterovirus 71 infections vary. It may
be linked to decreased population immunity or mutations affecting the virus’ virulence.

Treatment: There is no antiviral treatment or vaccine for enterovirus 71. Only supportive
treatment is possible in case of severe complications. 

Prevention and control: Sanitation and personal hygiene are the most important and effective
preventive measures, in particular when in direct contact with infected cases. These measures
include hand washing, especially after going to the toilet or changing babies’ nappies.
Contaminated surfaces and soiled clothing should also be disinfected.
 THE SPEED OF LIGHT

Everyday experiences suggest that although sound travels fast, its speed can be
determined without much trouble. We stand a distance of ten miles from a nuclear explosion and
hear the sound of that explosion some 48 seconds after we have seen it. From this we can
conclude that sounds takes 48 seconds to travel 10 miles, or one fifth of a mile (1,086 feet) in
one second. Similarly, when we see someone hitting a log of wood at a distance and hear the
sound of split wood a fraction of a second later, we can obtain a rough estimate of the speed of
sound.

When we come to light, everyday experiences fail us, for they strongly suggest that light
takes no time at all to travel from one point to another. Imagine two observers standing 2 miles
and 200 miles, respectively, from a nuclear explosion. Imagine further that they have nothing
better to do at that time than precisely clock the time they first see the explosion. As far as the
best clocks on Earth can tell, they would see the light this explosion yields at the exact same
time. Similarly, when I smile at myself in the mirror, the image I see is produced by light
bouncing from my face to the mirror and back. As far as I can tell, at the same instant I am
conscious of having produced a smile, I see myself smiling. All this of course raises a very
interesting question: Does light take any time to travel from one place to another, or does it
traverse distances in no time at all? Is light simply faster than sound, or does it possess infinite
speed? Does the light produced by far away galaxies take time to reach us, or does it reach us the
moment it is given off?

By now we know well the answer to this question, but this is a fairly recent development
in the history of ideas. Most of the ancient Greeks, including the ubiquitous Aristotle, believed
that the velocity of light was infinite; that is, that light would take 0 seconds to travel from one
end of the universe to the other. Others disagreed. Empedocles (490-435 B.C.), for instance,
believed that the speed of light was finite; that light took a certain amount of time to travel from
one point to another.

An interesting argument in favor of the proposition that light takes no time to travel from
one point to another was provided by Hero of Alexandria. Today we believe that sight involves
reflection of light from an object and its absorption by the eye. But Hero, like most Greeks,
believed that we see because the eye produces light. Now, Hero said, if I look skywards on a
starry night, close my eyes for a while, then open them, I see the very distant stars instantly. It
therefore must take the light from my eyes no time at all to travel to the faraway stars. Therefore,
light travels at an infinite speed.

The subject remained controversial for millennia. In the early eleventh century, two noted
Arab scientists, Avicena and Alhazen, provided commonsense arguments in favor of the
proposition that the velocity of light is finite. Alhazen, for instance, felt that light involves a
movement of something, and therefore that it cannot be at two places at the same time. The
Englishmen Roger Bacon (1212-1292) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) also felt that light
traveled with a finite speed.

By the time of the great astronomer and physicist Johannes Kepler's (1571-1630), the
issue still remained unresolved. Kepler subscribed to the view that light emitted at point A would
be seen instantly at point B, even if the distance between the 2 points was billions of miles. Rene
Descartes (day-KHART; 1596-1650), the great philosopher, mathematician, and scientist, not
only shared Kepler's views, but was the first to provide an excellent argument in favor of the
proposition that light took no time to travel from one point to another. Consider, Descartes said,
a lunar eclipse. The Moon, Descartes knew, does not shine by its own light; what we call
moonlight is simply a reflection of sunlight. Occasionally, Sun, Earth, and Moon form a straight
line, with the Earth between the two. The Moon then is in Earth's shadow, and cannot be seen.
We call this event a lunar eclipse.

The Moon, Descartes reasoned, is extremely far from Earth. So, if light does not reach
instantaneously from one point to another, it must take the Moon's reflected light some finite
time to reach us. Let's say light would take only one hour to travel the immense distance from the
Moon to Earth.

Now, Descartes continued, let us consider a lunar eclipse. The Moon has just entered the
shadow of the Earth, so that Sun, Earth, and Moon form a straight line. At this point, Earth
blocks sunlight from reaching the Moon. But the sunlight that had already passed the Earth will
continue traveling towards the Moon for another hour. It will then be reflected back to us and
take another hour to reach us. We shall therefore become aware of the eclipse two hours after the
Sun, Earth, and Moon formed a straight line. By then, the Moon will be farther along in its orbit
around the Earth. In other words, if light takes an hour to travel from Earth to the Moon, at the
time we see the eclipse, the Sun, Earth, and Moon will no longer form a straight line. But this is
contrary to astronomical observations: when we see the eclipse, Sun, Earth, and Moon do form
an exact line. Therefore, concluded Descartes, light takes no time to travel from one point to
another.

An even more interesting idea for resolving this question was proposed by Galileo (gahl-
ih-LAY-oh; 1564-1642) and carried out many years later by members of the Florentine
Academy. This experiment involved two investigators standing at, say, two hilltops one mile
apart. Let's imagine that these two guys are actually Galileo and his friend. The night is clear and
dark. Both observers hold covered lanterns. Galileo uncovers a lantern and simultaneously clocks
the time. As soon as his friend sees the light from Galileo's lantern, he uncovers his lantern.
When Galileo sees the light from his friend's lantern, he records the time (as best he can; the
clock was not yet invented). The experiment is repeated many times and the combined times
averaged. The observers then repeat the same procedure at a distance of ten miles. Now, the only
difference between the two sets of observations is the distance between Galileo and his friend. If
light travels at a finite speed, it would take longer to travel one mile and back than 10 miles and
back. Yet, no difference was detected, suggesting again that light either takes no time to travel
from one point to another, or that it does it too fast to be measured from a distance of a few
miles.

By 1665 another famous scientist, Robert Hooke, noted that Descartes' and Galileo's
experiments failed to prove the instant propagation of light. What they did prove, Hooke felt,
was, that if light took time to travel from one point to another, it did so "exceeding quick." If, for
instance, light took two minutes instead of two hours to go past Earth to the Moon and back to
Earth, the deviation from straight line of Sun, Earth, and Moon during an eclipse would be too
small to be detected. A similar argument could be raised against Galileo. If light took a very
small fraction of a second to travel 10 miles, its motion would appear instantaneous. In other
words, Galileo's and Descartes' observations were inconsistent with a comparatively slow speed
of light, but they still left open the question whether light took unimaginably short time to travel
great distances or whether it took no time at all to travel any distance.

By 1676, the question whether light takes time to travel from one point to another, or
whether it takes no time at all had been resolved by the Danish astronomer, Ole Roemer. Roemer
provided the first clearcut proof that light takes time to move from one point to another, and the
first reasonable estimate of its actual speed.
 

Selected moons of Jupiter, drawn to scale. 

Starting from top: Io, Europa, Ganymede,
and Callisto (courtesy: NASA)
To the naked eye, the planet Jupiter appears as a single, steady, point of light. Jupiter was one of
the first objects to attract Galileo's attention when he directed his telescope skywards. To his
astonishment, Jupiter no longer appeared as a single point of light, but as a small disk,
surrounded by four moons in orbit about it.
 In the decades following Galileo's discovery, these moons received a great deal of
attention from astronomers. Astronomers knew by then that an object in space takes a fixed time
to complete one revolution about another object. Earth, for instance, takes one year to complete
one revolution about the Sun. The Moon, similarly, takes 27.3 days to complete one revolution
about Earth. It would appear reasonable therefore to suppose that Io, for instance, completed one
revolution about Jupiter in a fixed period of time.

But how do you calculate how long it takes Io to travel about Jupiter exactly once?
Galileo himself noticed that, even on cloudless nights, Io disappeared from sight at given
intervals. It seemed to get closer and closer to Jupiter, and then to vanish behind it. Sometime
later it would reappear on the other side of Jupiter. The most reasonable interpretation for this
was an eclipse. At a certain portion of its orbit about Jupiter, Io cannot be seen by Earthly
observers because it is behind Jupiter. As it continues in its orbit, it reappears on the other side.

This gave astronomers the tool they needed to determine the revolution of Io around
Jupiter. They measured the exact time Io gets lost from view and the time it gets lost from view
again. The difference between the two is the time it takes Io to complete one revolution about
Jupiter. To allow for experimental error, you repeat the measurements a few times and average
the results out. The mean, culled from many years' observations by Roemer and others, turned
out to be 42 hours, 28 minutes, and 34 seconds.

But in this case, statistics and calculations of averages provide a misleading picture, for
the time intervals between two successive eclipses varied. It was precisely these unexpected
variations that led Roemer to his discovery of the speed of light.

To understand Roemer's basic procedure, it will be more convenient to ignore the real
numbers he worked with, and to arbitrarily assume that Io takes exactly 2 days to complete one
revolution about Jupiter. Let us say that at point 3 in the figure below, the beginning of Io's
eclipse has been recorded at exactly 11:08 p.m. January 3, 1672. Six days later we observe
another eclipse at point 4 at 11:09 p.m. What could be the possible explanation for this additional
minute? By January 9, the Earth moved a considerable distance from Io. Light from Io would
have to travel the same distance it traveled before, plus the distance between points 3 and 4,
before it could be perceived by an Earthly observer. After six more days pass, the eclipse would
be seen at 11:10, and so on, until, when the Earth reached the farthest point in its orbit away
point from Io, the eclipse would be seen at 11:16. On the way back, the reverse process would
occur, with the eclipse recorded on Earth first at 11:16; six days later, 11:15; at point 5, 11:09, at
point 3, 11:08; all the way back to something like 11:00 when the Earth comes closest in its orbit
to Io.
 Roemer of course had to work with an average interval of 42 hours, 28 minutes, and 34
seconds for one eclipse, so his calculations were more cumbersome than the ones above, but the
idea behind them was the same. He now knew how long it took light to go from one side of
Earth's orbit to the other, and he knew the distance itself (twice the distance of the Earth from the
Sun). If you know the distance an object travels in space, and the time it takes this object to
travel this distance, you can calculate this object's velocity. For instance, a car that covers 500
miles in 5 hours travels at an average speed of 500/5 = 100 miles per hour.

Roemer observations told him that when Earth was farthest away from Jupiter, eclipses of
Io were observed on Earth some 16 minutes later than when Earth was closest in its orbit to
Jupiter. So, he concluded, light takes 16 minutes to cover the diameter of Earth's orbit. Since the
diameter was known, he was able to come up with 140,000 miles per second as the speed of
light. Today we have a more accurate figure for the speed of light (186,000 miles in one second),
but this does not detract in any way from Roemer's achievement. His observations and
deductions showed, for the first time, that light takes time to travel from one point to another.
They also gave a fairly close approximation of the actual speed of light and showed that light
was unimaginably fast. Roemer was also able to explain Galileo's and Descartes' failures. At a
distance of a few miles, light travels too fast to be measured. It would, for instance, take a mere
1/18,600 of a second for light to travel 10 miles. Even moonlight reaches Earth in just 1.3
seconds.

The first independent confirmation of Roemer's discovery was given by James Bradley in
1729, nineteen years after Roemer's death. Bradley was also able to arrive at a much more
accurate estimate. Others have used a variety of ingenious approaches and instruments to further
refine this value, so that now we are reasonably certain that light travels some 186,000 miles in
one second, and use this value repeatedly in both astronomical and physical calculations.
It is perhaps worth noting that Roemer's observations were repeated in 1790 and again in 1874.
With the better instruments available then, the maximum lag time observed for Io's eclipse was
16 minutes and 34 seconds. Combined with the more accurate estimates of the diameter of the
earth's orbit (186,000,000 miles) then available, these more accurate data yield 186,000,000
miles / 994 seconds, or 187,000 miles per second for the speed of light. This fairly close estimate
shows that Roemer's approach made sense, and that it fell short by 46,000 miles per second for
technical reasons.
 Roemer's discovery of the speed of light has played a decisive role in the history of
physics and astronomy. For instance, in one of the best known equations of physics (E=mc 2), c
stands for the speed of light. This equation says that, if you convert a given mass into energy,
you can calculate the amount of energy you get by multiplying the mass by 186,000 and again by
186,000. Or roughly, to find out the quantity of energy, you need to multiply the mass by 35
billion! This is why, in nuclear explosions, a little bit of uranium or hydrogen produces
enormous amounts of energy.

Today, we have excellent reasons to believe that nothing in the universe can possibly
travel faster than 186,000 miles in one second. Nothing, that is, can go faster than the speed of
light. As things stand now, we can observe the stars, but, because they are light years away, we
cannot visit them. As Isaac Asimov put it: " The scientists . . . who tried to measure the speed
light, little knew they were measuring the prisons bars that may keep us in the solar system
forever."

Additional References
Asimov, I. 1984. Asimov's New Guide to Science.
Asimov, I. 1986. How Did We Find Out about the Speed of Light?
Cohen, B. I. 1942. Roemer and the First Determination of the Speed of Light.
Froome, K. D. and Essen, L. 1969. The Velocity of Light and Radio Waves.
Sanders, J. H. 1965. The Velocity of Light.