What is the Higgs boson?

Physicists are set to announce the latest results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but what exactly is the Higgs boson, why do people call it the 'god particle' and what would its discovery mean for physics?

What is the Higgs boson?


What exactly is the Higgs field?


Why do people call it the 'god particle'?


According to Higgs, it wasn't even Lederman's choice to call it the god particle: "He wanted to refer to it as that 'goddamn particle' and his editor wouldn't let him."

What would finding the Higgs boson mean for physics?



How was the data collected?



I thought the LHC had broken down?

Engineers threw the switch to start up the LHC in September 2008 to global fanfare. All went well until it had to be shut down again 36 hours later. The incident – which led to a helium leak into the tunnel housing the superconductor ring – is thought to have been caused when a faulty electrical wire between two magnets was melted by the high current passing through it. Repairs and a new safety system cost an estimated £24m. The LHC was restarted in November 2009 and became the most powerful particle accelerator in the world later that month.

What else is the LHC looking for?

There's lots on the menu including supersymmetry (which predicts that every fundamental particle has an invisible, overweight twin), dark matter (which makes up around 25% of the matter in the universe but does not emit light or any other kind of radiation), extra dimensions and black holes.

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