Scientists at CERN have claimed to have found the Higgs boson, more popularly known as 'God particle'. Here's a quick look at some things you need to know about the particle that supposedly gives mass to universe.
Higgs boson particle is an elementary particle in the Standard Model, the theory that describes the basic building blocks of the universe. It belongs to a class of particles known as bosons.
ADVERTISEMENT
It is named after Peter Higgs, a British theoretical physicist and an emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh. Higgs mechanism is generally accepted as an important ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics, without which particles would have no mass.
Higgs mechanism predicts the existence of the Higgs boson particle, often described as "the most sought-after particle in modern physics."
The Higgs boson is also called "the God particle" by media, after the title of Leon Lederman's popular science book on particle physics, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?
CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) announced on the 4th of July 2012 that they had experimentally established the existence of the Higgs boson particle.
The 'God particle' was found after sifting through subatomic debris of more than 1,000 trillion proton collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider.