About 50 years ago, Peter Higgs and other scientists proposed that a particle existed that was so minuscule it couldn’t be detected. Yet the Standard Model of physics relied on its existence, which is why the scientific community has feverishly worked to prove the particle was, in fact, real. If the Higgs boson particle didn’t exist, our understanding of physics would be set back to square one.
Renowned theoretical astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss explains how the Higgs boson particle was discovered and the implications this discovery has for our understanding of the universe. Why did we need the Large Hadron Collider to find it? What happens to this infinitesimal particle after its fraction-of-a-second existence? And what now for the future of particle physics?
Krauss is director of the Origins Project and co-director of the Cosmology Initiative at Arizona State University, and the author of A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (Free Press, 2012), which is available for signing at the program.
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Physicist Peter Higgs, after whom the Higgs boson particle is named, has been recognised in the New Year Honours. Read article now>>
