Higgs boson discovery marks new start in probing the unknown The Yomiuri Shimbun A new subatomic particle

believed to be the "Higgs boson," hunted for more than 40 years by particle physicists around world, has been discovered at long last. The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, on the SwissFrench border near Geneva, announced thediscovery on Wednesday. This can definitely be called a glorious accomplishment that will go down in history. In the smallest fractions of a second after the birth of the universe, the Higgs boson was responsible for the existence ofmass, commonly thought of as weight, in all matter, according to the "Standard Model" of physics. Since it is the origin ofmass in the universe, the Higgs boson is also known as the "God particle." How did the universe come into being? How was substance brought into existence? How did galaxies form and the stars ignite? How did life first begin to stir? The new discovery marks a milestone in the grand quest to understand the ultimate origins of humanity. According to the Standard Model, every substance consists of 17 kinds of ultramicroscopic particles that cannot be divided into any smaller units. === Final building block Of such particles, electrons were first discovered in 1897, while the existence of a total of 16 particles--every subatomic particle except the Higgs boson--had been confirmed by 2000. The discovery of the Higgs boson means the final building block necessary to explain the development of the universe from its birth 13.7 billion years ago right up to the present moment has been identified.

This achievement has been made using CERN's circular 27-kilometer underground proton accelerator. The accelerator is a gigantic facility built at a cost of 550 billion yen. It can make protons, a kind of microparticle, collide with each other in a vacuum at nearly the speed of light for a high-energy collision. CERN researchers repeated such collisions 1.1 quadrillion times, analyzing in detail the fragments produced by the impacts. These include the new Higgs particle, which they have identified with 99.99998 percent certainty, the announcement said. From Japan, 110 researchers from universities and other research organizations, including the University of Tokyo, have taken part in the CERN program, playing significant roles in such activities as data analysis. It was a theory formulated by Yoichiro Nambu, a Japanese-born professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, that provided the foundation for the prediction of the existence of the Higgs boson. We feel proud of Japan's contribution. === Trust in science The pursuit of mysteries of the universe is certain to go on. Experiments with the newly found subatomic particle will lead to the detailed elucidation of its properties. It may even be possible to crack open a new realm of cosmic theory. Physicists have great expectations. This is because current theory can account for about only 4 percent of the energy that lets matter, and the universe itself, exist. We hope to see Japanese researchers aggressively striving to make further discoveries to help shape our understandingof the universe. After the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent nuclear power plant accident last year, an increasing number ofpeople in this country are becoming distrustful of or anxious about science and technology. A survey by the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry has shown that as many as four out of every 10 people think humans "cannot

take control" of outcomes of science and technology. This is double the figure from before the March 11, 2011, disaster. It is strongly hoped that a breakthrough such as the discovery of the Higgs boson will help resuscitate people's dreams about the future of science. (From The Yomiuri Shimbun, July 7, 2012)

Discovery of the Higgs Boson God Particle What Does it Mean?

By now, you have likely heard the recent CERN announcement about the discovery of the Higgs boson the so-called God Particle. Unfortunately, few people really understand what the particle is or what the discovery means, and few particle physicists out there are able to explain it in a way that is easy for the lay person to understand. It is essentially like Galileo attempting to convince humanity and more specifically the Church that the Earth was not in fact the center of the Universe. As fantastical as it sounds, the discovery of the Higgs boson is no less Earthshattering. The presence of the particle transforms something that was formerly invisible, into a visible and measureable entity. It can help science to explain how and why things matter, objects, people and life itself could come to exist in a Universe filled with nothing but subatomic particles. The model was first proposed by a particle Physicist by the name of Peter Higgs and other physicists, who stipulated that there was an invisible field through which elementary particles gain mass as they pass through it. In other words, this theoretical field served as a sort of primordial soup some physicists describe it as a cosmic molasses that transforms an invisible, elementary particle into something that has actual mass. It describes the creation of matter at the point of the big bang, and from this discovery, particle physicists now have their imaginations inflamed with where

this discovery can lead to an possibility of other dimensions, an understanding of gravity, and so much more.

The Higgs Field and the Higgs Boson The next question you may be asking is that model describes an invisible field, so whats the god particle all about. Well, Peter Higgs proposed in 1964 that by exciting that invisible field with the right level of energy, that invisible field would produce an actual particle thereby proving the existence of the field itself. The particle is one of the simplest particles, and therefore the most difficult to detect. It has no spin, no electrical charge, and no color. It decays and disappears in a trillionth of a second after it becomes detectable. Higgs could not predict the particles mass, therefore it was extremely difficult to detect even though generations of particle physicists tried, and numerous particle accelerators failed to produce it. Scientists at the Tevatron at Fermi National Accelerator Lab and Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois shut down in 2011 after spending years attempting to produce and detect the Higgs Boson. Two years ago, CERN a multinational research center headquartered in Geneva built the massive Large Hadron Collider. It was a $10.5 billion project that resulted in a particle accelerator that is 17-miles (27-kilometers) in circumference. The accelerator collides billions of subatomic particles that are all traveling at near the speed of light. The collisions produce effects, and from the data gathered, scientists determine whether there were any new particles produced, such as the Higgs boson. 10,000 scientists around the world work on data produced by the accelerator, but no one even Higgs himself ever expected that the Higgs boson would be discovered two years later. Higgs never believed his theoretical partical would be discovered in his lifetime. At age 83, he spoke at the press conference in Edinburgh, and told reporters: At the beginning I had no idea a discovery would be made in my lifetime. Its very nice to be right sometimes.

What the Discovery May Mean If you ask different particle physicists what the discovery may mean for our understanding of the Universe, youll get many different answers. The truth is, what the discovery produces is verification of the Higgs Boson theory, and that verification opens up many new doors of exploration in particle physics, and in furthering our understanding of what makes up the reality around us. Some concepts mentioned throughout the media include the exploration for other dimensions, research behind the concept of spooky action at a distance where particles can affect eachother across space, or it could even lead to a greater understanding of matter and antimatter. The one thing that most scientists agree on at this point is that the discovery is solid a Five Sigma finding, the gold standard in particle physics and that this one single discovery could now spawn multiple amazing, Earth-shattering discoveries about reality in the very near future. It is an exciting time for the human race and with the discovery of the Higgs boson, it is only just the beginning.

Higgs Boson: Discovery of particle could redefine physical world

ASPEN, Colo: Signaling a likely end to one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science, physicists said Wednesday that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that looks for all the world like the Higgs boson, a key to understanding why there is diversity and life in the universe.Like Omar Sharif materializing out of the shimmering desert as a man on a camel in "Lawrence of Arabia,"

the elusive boson has been coming slowly into view since last winter, as the first signals of its existence grew until they practically jumped off the chart. "I think we have it," said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN, the multinational research center headquartered in Geneva. The agency is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the immense particle accelerator that produced the new data by colliding protons. The findings were announced by two separate teams. Heuer called the discovery "a historic milestone." He and others said that it was too soon to know for sure, however, whether the new particle is the one predicted by the Standard Model, the theory that has ruled physics for the last half-century. The particle is predicted to imbue elementary particles with mass. It may be an impostor as yet unknown to physics, perhaps the first of many particles yet to be discovered. That possibility is particularly exciting to physicists, as it could point the way to new, deeper ideas, beyond the Standard Model, about the nature of reality. For now, some physicists are simply calling it a "Higgslike" particle. "It's something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years," said Joe Incandela, a physicist of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a spokesman for one of the two groups reporting new data on Wednesday. Here at the Aspen Center for Physics, a retreat for scientists, bleary-eyed physicists drank champagne in the wee hours as word arrived via Webcast from CERN. It was a scene duplicated in Melbourne, Australia, where physicists had gathered for a major conference, as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, Princeton, New York, London and beyond - everywhere that members of a curious species have dedicated their lives and fortunes to the search for their origins in a dark universe. In Geneva, 1,000 people stood in line all night to get into an auditorium at CERN, where some attendees noted a rock-concert ambience. Peter Higgs, the University of Edinburgh theorist for whom the boson is named, entered the meeting to a sustained ovation. Confirmation of the Higgs boson or something very much like it would constitute a rendezvous with destiny for a generation of physicists who have believed in the boson for half a century without ever seeing it. The finding affirms a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws - but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry. According to the Standard Model, the Higgs boson is the only manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass. Particles wading through the field gain heft the way a bill going through Congress attracts riders and amendments, becoming ever more ponderous.

Without the Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, all elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight. There would be neither atoms nor life. Physicists said that they would probably be studying the new particle for years. Any deviations from the simplest version predicted by current theory - and there are hints of some already - could begin to answer questions left hanging by the Standard Model. For example, what is the dark matter that provides the gravitational scaffolding of galaxies?

And why is the universe made of matter instead of antimatter? "If the boson really is not acting standard, then that will imply that there is more to the story - more particles, maybe more forces around the corner," Neal Weiner, a theorist at New York University, wrote in an email. "What that would be is anyone's guess at the moment." Wednesday's announcement was also an impressive opening act for the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest physics machine, which cost $10 billion to build and only began operating two years ago. It is still running at only half-power. Physicists had been icing the Champagne since last December. Two teams of about 3,000 physicists each - one named Atlas, led by Fabiola Gianotti, and the other CMS, led by Incandela - operate giant detectors in the collider, sorting the debris from the primordial fireballs left after proton collisions.

God Particle" Found? "Historic Milestone" From Higgs Boson Hunters

"I think we have it. You agree?" Speaking to a packed audience Wednesday morning in Geneva, CERN director general Rolf Heuer confirmed that two separate teams working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are more than 99 percent certain they've discovered the Higgs boson, aka the God particleor at the least a brand-new particle exactly where they expected the Higgs to be. The long-sought particle may complete the standard model of physics by explaining why objects in our universe have massand in so doing, why galaxies, planets, and even humans have any right to exist. (See Large Hadron Collider pictures.)

"We have a discovery," Heuer said at the seminar. "We have observed a new particle consistent with a Higgs boson." At the meeting were four theorists who helped develop the Higgs theory in the 1960s, including Peter Higgs himself, who could be seen wiping away tears as the announcement was made. Although preliminary, the results show a so-called five-sigma of significance, which means that there is only a one in a million chance that the Higgs-like signal the teams observed is a statistical fluke. "It's a tremendous and exciting time," said physicist Michael Tuts, who works with the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) Experiment, one of the two Higgs-seeking LHC projects. The Columbia University physicist had organized a wee-hours gathering of physicists and students in the U.S. to watch the announcement, which took place at 9 a.m., Geneva time. "This is the payoff. This is what you do it for." The two LHC teams searching for the Higgsthe other being the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) projectdid so independently. Neither one knew what the other would present this morning. "It was interesting that the competing experiment essentially had the same result," said physicist Ryszard Stroynowski, an ATLAS team member based at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "It provides additional confirmation." CERN head Heuer called today's announcement a "historic milestone" but cautioned that much work lies ahead as physicists attempt to confirm the newfound particle's identity and further probe its properties. For example, though the teams are certain the new particle has the proper mass for the predicted Higgs boson, they still need to determine whether it behaves as the God particle is thought to behaveand therefore what its role in the creation and maintenance of the universe is. "I think we can all be proud ... but it's a beginning," Heuer said. Higgs Boson Results Exceeded Expectations The five-sigma results from both the ATLAS and CMS experiments exceeded the expectations of many physicists, including David Evans, leader of the U.K. team that works on the LHC-based ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) Collaboration.

Evans had predicted Tuesday the teams would announce a four-sigma resultjust short of the rigorous standard traditionally required for a new-particle observation to officially count as a true discovery and not a fluke. "It's even better than I expected," said Evans, of the University of Birmingham in the U.K. "I think we can say the Higgs is here. It exists." Evans attributed the stronger-than-expected results to "a mixture of the LHC doing a fantastic job" and "ATLAS and CMS doing a fantastic job of improving their analysis since December," when the two teams announced a two-sigma observation of signs of a Higgs-like particle. "So even with the same data, they can get more significance." ATLAS spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti also had high praise for the LHC, a multibilliondollar machine that had suffered numerous mishaps and setbacks in its early days. (Related: "Electrical Glitch Delays Large Hadron Collider.") "The LHC and experiments have been doing miracles. I think we are working beyond design," the Italian particle physicist added. ALICE's Evans said he was extremely pleased by the Higgs results but admitted feeling just a bit disappointed that the results weren't more surprising. "Secretly I would have loved it to be something slightly different than the standard model predictions, because that would indicate that there's something more out there." On God-Particle Hunt, It's "Easy to Fool Yourself" Wednesday's announcement builds on results from last December, when the ATLAS and CMS teams said their data suggested that the Higgs boson has a mass of about 125 gigaelectron volts (GeV)about 125 times the mass of a proton, a positively charged particle in an atom's nucleus. (See "Hints of Higgs Boson Seen at LHCProof by Next Summer?") "For the first time there was a case where we expected to [rule out] the Higgs, and we weren't able to do so," said Tim Barklow, an experimental physicist with the ATLAS Experiment who's based at Stanford University's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. A two-sigma finding translates to about a 95 percent chance that results are not due to a statistical fluke. While that might seem impressive, it falls short of the stringent five-sigma level that high-energy physicists traditionally require for an official discovery. Five sigma means there's a less than one in a million probability that a finding is due to chance.

"We make these rules and impose them on ourselves because, when you are exploring on the frontier, it is easy to fool yourself," said Michael Peskin, a theoretical physicist also at SLAC. (Related: "'God Particle' May Be Five Distinct Particles, New Evidence Shows.") Higgs Holds It All Together? The Higgs boson is one of the final puzzle pieces required for a complete understanding of the standard model of physicsthe so-far successful theory that explains how fundamental particles interact with the elementary forces of nature. The so-called God particle was proposed in the 1960s by Peter Higgs to explain why some particles, such as quarksbuilding blocks of protons, among other thingsand electrons have mass, while others, such as the light-carrying photon particle, do not. Higgs's idea was that the universe is bathed in an invisible field similar to a magnetic field. Every particle feels this fieldnow known as the Higgs fieldbut to varying degrees. If a particle can move through this field with little or no interaction, there will be no drag, and that particle will have little or no mass. Alternatively, if a particle interacts significantly with the Higgs field, it will have a higher mass. The idea of the Higgs field requires the acceptance of a related particle: the Higgs boson. According to the standard model, if the Higgs field didn't exist, the universe would be a very different place, said SLAC's Peskin, who isn't involved in the LHC experiments. "It would be very difficult to form atoms," Peskin said. "So our orderly world, where matter is made of atoms, and electrons form chemical bondswe wouldn't have that if we did not have the Higgs field." In other words: no galaxies, no stars, no planets, no life on Earth. "Nature Is Really Nasty" to Higgs Boson Seekers Buried beneath the French-Swiss border, the Large Hadron Collider is essentially a 17mile-long (27-kilometer-long) oval tunnel. Inside, counter-rotating beams of protons are boosted to nearly the speed of light using an electric field before being magnetically steered into collisions. Exotic fundamental particlessome of which likely haven't existed since the early moments after the big bangare created in the high-energy crashes. But the odd particles hang around for only fractions of a second before decaying into other particles.

(Also see "Strange Particle Created; May Rewrite How Matter's Made.") Theory predicts that the Higgs boson's existence is too fleeting to be recorded by LHC instruments, but physicists think they can confirm its creation if they can spot the particles it decays into. (Explore a Higgs boson interactive.) Now that the Higgs bosonor something like ithas been confirmed to indeed have a mass of around 125 to 126 GeV, scientists have a better idea why the God particle has avoided detection for so long. This mass is just high enough to be out of reach of earlier, lower-energy particle accelerators, such as the LHC's predecessor, the Large Electron-Positron Collider, which could probe to only about 115 GeV. At the same time 125 GeV is not so massive that it produces decay products so unusual that their detection would be clear proof of the Higgs's existence. In reality the Higgs appears to transform into relatively commonplace decay products such as quarks, which are produced by the millions at the LHC. "It just so happens that nature is really nasty to us, and the range that we've narrowed [the Higgs] down to is the range that makes it most difficult to find," ALICE's Evans said. Despite the challenges, ATLAS's Gianotti said, it's fortunate that the Higgs has the mass that it does. "It's very nice for the standard-model Higgs boson to be at that mass," she said. "Because at that mass we can measure it at the LHC in a huge number of final states. So, thanks Nature." Going for the Gold While the search for the Higgs was a primary motivation for the construction of the LHC, activity at the world's largest atom smasher won't stop if the Higgs boson is confirmed. For one thing, the two teams will be busy preparing the data they presented today for submission to scientific journals for publication. There are also lingering questions that will require years of follow-up work, such as what the God particle's "decay channels" arethat is, what particles the Higgs transforms into as it sheds energy. The answer to that question will allow physicists to determine whether the particle they have discovered is the one predicted from theory or something more exotic, Columbia University's Tuts said.

"Does it really smell and taste like a Higgs? Is it being produced at the rate that a standard model Higgs would predict? That's the work that's going to go on over the course of this year at least," he added. Something the public often forgets, too, is that ATLAS and CMS make up only two of the LHC's four major experiments, Evans said. The other twothe LHCb Collaboration and Evan's own ALICEare investigating other physics arcana, such as why the universe contains so little antimatter. (See "Antimatter Atoms Trapped for First Time'A Big Deal.'") "If you want to compare it to the Olympics, finding the Higgs would be like winning just one gold medal," Evans said. "I'm sure most countries would like to win more than one gold medal. And I think CERN is going to deliver a lot more gold medals over the years."

Higgs boson-like particle discovery claimed at LHC

Cern scientists reporting from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have claimed the discovery of a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson. The particle has been the subject of a 45-year hunt to explain how matter attains its mass. Both of the Higgs boson-hunting experiments at the LHC see a level of certainty in their data worthy of a "discovery". More work will be needed to be certain that what they see is a Higgs, however.

Prof Stephen Hawking tells the BBC's Pallab Ghosh the discovery has cost him $100 The results announced at Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research), home of the LHC in Geneva, were met with loud applause and cheering. Prof Peter Higgs, after whom the particle is named, wiped a tear from his eye as the teams finished their presentations in the Cern auditorium. "I would like to add my congratulations to everyone involved in this achievement," he added later. "It's really an incredible thing that it's happened in my lifetime." Prof Stephen Hawking joined in with an opinion on a topic often discussed in hushed tones. "This is an important result and should earn Peter Higgs the Nobel Prize," he told BBC News. "But it is a pity in a way because the great advances in physics have come from experiments that gave results we didn't expect." 'Dramatic' The CMS team claimed they had seen a "bump" in their data corresponding to a particle weighing in at 125.3 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) - about 133 times heavier than the protons that lie at the heart of every atom.

The BBC's George Alagiah explains the Higgs boson They claimed that by combining two data sets, they had attained a confidence level just at the "five-sigma" point - about a one-in-3.5 million chance that the signal they see would appear if there were no Higgs particle.

However, a full combination of the CMS data brings that number just back to 4.9 sigma a one-in-two million chance. Prof Joe Incandela, spokesman for the CMS, was unequivocal: "The results are preliminary but the five-sigma signal at around 125 GeV we're seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle," he told the Geneva meeting. Atlas results were even more promising, at a slightly higher mass: "We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of five sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV," said Dr Fabiola Gianotti, spokeswoman for the Atlas experiment at the LHC.

Peter Higgs joined three of the six theoreticians who first predicted the Higgs at the conference Prof Rolf Heuer, director-general of Cern, commented: "As a layman I would now say I think we have it." "We have a discovery - we have observed a new particle consistent with a Higgs boson. But which one? That remains open. "It is a historic milestone but it is only the beginning." Commenting on the emotions of the scientists involved in the discovery, Prof Incandela said: "It didn't really hit me emotionally until today because we have to be so focussed but I'm super-proud." Dr Gianotti echoed his thoughts, adding: "The last few days have been extremely intense, full of work, lots of emotions." A confirmation that this is the Higgs boson would be one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the century; the hunt for the Higgs has been compared by some physicists to the Apollo programme that reached the Moon in the 1960s. Continue reading the main story

Statistics of a 'discovery'

Particle physics has an accepted definition for a discovery: a "five-sigma" (or five standard-deviation) level of certainty The number of sigmas measures how unlikely it is to get a certain experimental result as a matter of chance rather than due to a real effect Similarly, tossing a coin and getting a number of heads in a row may just be chance, rather than a sign of a "loaded" coin A "three-sigma" level represents about the same likelihood as tossing eight heads in a row Five sigma, on the other hand, would correspond to tossing more than 20 in a row Independent confirmation by other experiments turns five-sigma findings into accepted discoveries BBC: Higgs boson collection

Scientists would then have to assess whether the particle they see behaves like the version of the Higgs particle predicted by the Standard Model, the current best theory to explain how the Universe works. However, it might also be something more exotic. All the matter we can see appears to comprise just 4% of the Universe, the rest being made up by mysterious dark matter and dark energy. A more exotic version of the Higgs could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the Universe that remains obscure. Scientists will have to look at how the Higgs decays - or transforms - into other, more stable particles after being produced in collisions at the LHC. Dr Pippa Wells, a member of the Atlas experiment, said that several of the decay paths already showed deviations from what one would expect of the Standard Model Higgs. For example, a decay path where the Higgs transforms into two photon particles was "a bit on the high side", she explained. These could get back into line as more statistics are added, but on the other hand, they may not.

"We're reaching into the fabric of the Universe at a level we've never done before," said Prof Incandela. "We're on the frontier now, on the edge of a new exploration. This could be the only part of the story that's left, or we could open a whole new realm of discovery." Continue reading the main story

The Standard Model and the Higgs boson

The Standard Model is the simplest set of ingredients - elementary particles - needed to make up the world we see in the heavens and in the laboratory Quarks combine together to make, for example, the proton and neutron - which make up the nuclei of atoms today - though more exotic combinations were around in the Universe's early days Leptons come in charged and uncharged versions; electrons - the most familiar charged lepton - together with quarks make up all the matter we can see; the uncharged leptons are neutrinos, which rarely interact with matter

 The "force carriers" are particles whose movements are observed as familiar forces such as those behind electricity and light (electromagnetism) and radioactive decay (the weak nuclear force) The Higgs boson came about because although the Standard Model holds together neatly, nothing requires the particles to have mass; for a fuller theory, the Higgs - or something else - must fill in that gap

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Clue To The Universe? Q&A On The Higgs Boson

Updated: 9:13am UK, Wednesday 04 July 2012 By Thomas Moore, science correspondent Scientists have revealed tantalising evidence of a mysterious force that binds the universe together the Higgs boson. :: What is a Higgs boson? Physicists have tried to explain how the universe works in mathematical equations. But the sums just do not add up. According to the maths, the building blocks, or particles, that make up the universe should be whizzing around at the speed of light. In that scenario the planets, people and objects around us simply couldn't exist.

So British physicist Peter Higgs proposed that there was an invisible force field that permeates the universe, gluing together the particles, giving them mass. This is the Higgs field and it has an associated 'boson', a go-between that governs how sub-atomic particles react to the force field. Together they are called the Higgs boson and they make the maths work. :: So is that the 'God' particle? The Higgs boson is popularly known as the God particle because it is invisible; its effects can be felt everywhere and it gives substance to everything in the universe. Most physicists cringe at the name, though. :: So they've found it? Experts are now confident they have caught sight of the particle. Whilst it is a preliminary result, it has been described as very strong and very solid. :: How did they attempt to find it? Scientists used the 6bn Large Hadron Collider, a 27km-long doughnut-shaped tunnel buried deep underground. They fired proton beams (hadrons) at almost the speed of light in opposite directions around the tunnel until they collide. These are conditions similar to the Big Bang theory of how the universe was created. In the debris of the explosion they looked for evidence for the Higgs boson. :: So this is all about the Big Bang? All the particles in the universe would have been created in the aftermath of the Big Bang. But so far scientists have only been able to get a handle on 4% of the universe. The rest is made of dark matter and dark energy, which scientists can't see. They know it exists, though, from its effects on other celestial bodies. If the Higgs boson does exist it could be the gateway to understanding how the Universe works.