ZPEnergy.com - The Yukawa's meson and the Higgs' boson

In 1935 Yukawa published his theory of mesons, which explained the interaction between protons and neutrons, and was a major influence on research into elementary particles.

In 1949 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics, after the discovery by C. P. Powell, G. Occhialini, and C Lattes, of Yukawa's predicted pion in 1947.

According to Yukawa's idea, a meson would be jumping between two protons, so that the partnership proton+meson would play the role of a neutron.

Today the physicists know that the neutron has the quark structure (d,u,d), and the meson does not play any role within the structure of the neutron.

Therefore, in spite of he had predicted the existence of the meson, actually the meson does NOT play the role supposed originally by Yukawa.

Such "coincidence" is very significant, because it shows that in spite of a particle is predicted by a theory (because the author wrongly supposed that it plays some role in the Nature), but its detection does no mean the theory is correct, because the particle actually does not play that role imagined by the author.

In the case of Yukawa, he predicted the existence of a meson, but there are many other mesons existing in Nature. Therefore the meson was detected by experiments because many other mesons exist (and so inevitably one among several mesons would be detected), and not because Yukawa predicted its existence.

Perhaps in the upcoming years we will see the repetition of a similar coincidence. Because today the physicists are trying to detect the Higgs boson, believing that such boson is responsible for the mass of particles.

And suppose that when the proton is broken in several particles, one of them is like predicted by Higgs theory.

But suppose that such particle does not play any role so that to give mass to the particles.

Well, then the particle will be detected in the Large Hadron Collider, and we will see a new "coincidence" playing again its role: the physicists will be sure that such particle is the Higgs boson, and it is responsible for the mass of particles.

So, as already happened in the case of Yukawa's meson, it's possible we may see to repeat in upcoming years a similar coincidence: the physicists will credit to a particle (that has NOTHING to do with the mass of the particles), the property of giving mass to all the particles of the universe.

It seems God is playing a joke with the physicists.