ChronoFive
Play today’s puzzle
Setting the scene
The Higgs boson was announced July 4, 2012, by CERN scientists at the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs, predicted in 1964 by Peter Higgs, is the particle that gives other particles mass via the Higgs field. Its discovery confirmed the Standard Model of physics.
What happened
The LHC, a 17-mile ring under Switzerland-France, collided protons at near light speed. Two experiments, ATLAS and CMS, independently detected the particle at 125 GeV. Higgs and François Englert won the 2013 Nobel Prize.
Why it still matters
The discovery was a triumph of international collaboration and big science, involving 10,000 scientists. July 4, 2012, completed the Standard Model and opened questions about dark matter and beyond.
Background
It explained how particles gain mass.