Feature Particle Physics

A primer on the long-sought Higgs boson

Discovering the Higgs boson is cause for celebration — and for explanation, of what the particle is and why it matters.

Nicolle Rager Fuller

By Tom Siegfried

- More than 2 years ago

For decades, physicists have been promising the world that it is worth the money to build enormous machines, costing billions of dollars, to shock empty space into revealing an exotic particle called the Higgs boson.