The Higgs Boson

Scientists around the world were elated by the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. The elusive subatomic particle was first postulated by British physicist Peter Higgs in 1964, and was finally detected for the first time this year at CERN, with its Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest particle accelerator at over five miles in diameter. The Higgs boson is believed to be what enables matter to have mass, and is thus part of the essential "glue" that holds the entire universe together. 

Interestingly, the particle was not so much detected, as created. Most people are familiar with Albert Einstein's famous equation e=mc² which states that when converting mass to energy or vice versa, the amount of energy is equal to the amount of mass times the speed of light squared, meaning that a very small amount of mass can produce a very large amount of energy. This is the principle of the atomic bomb. But in the Higgs experiment, protons were accelerated to nearly the speed of light, giving them a huge amount of kinetic energy, and when they were brought into head on collisions with each other, the tremendous energy released by the collisions resulted in the formation of numerous new particles, including the Higgs boson. 

The goal of particle physics is to discover the most fundamental objects in the universe, and explain their interactions in the simplest way possible. To learn more about the Higgs boson and the world of particle physics in general, you can view the current episode of Future Talk in its entirety by clicking here, or divided into three shorter segments by clicking here.