Higgs Boson Explained: What Is It and Why It’s Called “The God Particle

In 2012, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN made a significant discovery: the Higgs boson particle. This particle, predicted by physicist Peter Higgs in 1964, plays a crucial role in explaining how everything in the universe obtains mass.

Higgs theorized the existence of this particle as a fundamental force-carrying particle associated with the Higgs field, a quantum field that permeates the universe and gives mass to other particles. It took 50 years for Higgs’s theory to be confirmed, with the particle’s discovery at the Large Hadron Collider being a groundbreaking achievement.

As a result, Mr. Higgs was awarded the Nobel prize. The importance of the Higgs boson lies in the fact that it gives mass to fundamental particles, without which, according to the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), the universe’s particles would have had no mass at the beginning and would have moved at the speed of light.

The Higgs boson has a mass of 125 billion electron volts and plays a vital role in the formation of the universe. Additionally, the particle is often referred to as “the God Particle,” a name that originated from a book by physicist Leon Lederman, “The God Particle,” though this label has drawn criticism from religious communities.

Peter Higgs, the physicist behind the theory of the Higgs boson, was a modest and unassuming individual. Despite his contributions to science, he was uncomfortable with his sudden fame and the sensationalized nickname for the particle.

Ultimately, the discovery of the Higgs boson was a significant scientific milestone, shedding light on the fundamental forces and structures that underpin the universe.