A primer on the long-sought Higgs boson
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. After years of false starts and frustration, hints and hopes, the Higgs has finally been found at the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva. It’s a cause for celebration — and for explanation, of what the Higgs is and why it matters.