However, for many years, it was unknown how and why only these exchange particles, but not the others, acquire mass. This explains the weak nuclear force’s limited range and how it works in radioactive decay. And these bosons, on the other hand, have a mass. The weak nuclear force, however, does not work with the plan: On the one hand, it contains two carrier particles, the W and Z bosons, instead of one. Photons may thus travel at the speed of light without encountering any obstacles. Photons and gluons are also examples of carrier particles of electromagnetic and strong nuclear forces. According to theory, they should not have any mass, unlike fermions that create matter, such as quarks and electrons. The weak nuclear forceĪdditionally, there is a difficulty with the bosons, which serve as the basic forces’ carriers. But from whence does the mass of the constituent particles come? For a very long time, the Standard Model of particle physics-the foundation of our conception of the physical universe-did not provide a solution. The fundamental constituents of matter stick together and interact with one another only because of the mass of the particles that make them up.

The absence of mass would result in a cosmos devoid of atoms and other forms of ordinary matter. The Higgs particle, in theory, may split into a photon and dark matter particles. Text and images may be altered, removed, or added to as an editorial decision to keep information current.What makes the Higgs boson special? In an LHC detector, a Higgs particle was created and subsequently split into four muons (the four red lines). It soon became clear that this same process would work for just about any quantum field the Higgs field explains the masses of a range of other fundamental particles – such as quarks and electrons – which all resist being pushed as they take a moment to treat their sweet tooth.Īll Explainers are determined by fact checkers to be correct and relevant at the time of publishing. Think of the Higgs field as a candy shop, with bosons reluctant to be rushed as they dine on chocolate, only to leave a bunch of short-lived 'Higgs wrappers' in their wake. Having a field with a non-zero value in every corner of the Universe would upset a fundamental balance in quantum mechanics that in theory should generate a kind of particle already ruled out by experiments.īut Higgs, Englert, and Brout showed that if this hypothetical field was linked with the field responsible for the weak force, the troublesome particle nobody had seen would be gobbled up, leaving behind some heavyweight W and Z bosons and a relatively heavy, spin-less, uncharged 'Higgs' boson (that would quickly crumble apart). History recognizes the proposal made by Higgs and colleagues François Englert and Robert Brout in 1964, based on a new type of quantum field that was active everywhere, even throughout empty space. Similar explanations for this split – and the difference in masses – came from several groups of physicists around the world. In 2012, just such a particle was detected by two of the Large Hadron Collider's detectors, officially leading to the Higgs boson's inclusion as part of the Standard Model and providing strong evidence for the Higgs mechanism. It's a relatively heavy, uncharged, highly unstable boson (force-carrying particle, one with zero spin) that exists for a blink before breaking down into any few of a variety of other particles.

What is the Higgs boson, then?Īs with all quantum fields, the Higgs field gives rise to its own kind of fundamental particle, the Higgs boson. His name has since become synonymous with the field, its particle, and its mechanism of action. The field's existence was first theorized in the early 1960s, with physicists considering the consequences of a hypothetical field that would explain how electromagnetism and the weak force became separated, and why some force-carrying ( or gauge) particles have mass (like W and Z bosons) while others (like photons) don't.īritish physicist Peter Higgs was one of a number of researchers working on this model.