What is the Higgs Boson?

In quantum physics, the Higgs Boson is a particle originally proposed by Peter Higgs, a British theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh. In 1964 Higgs proposed a mechanism for the breaking of electroweak symmetry (the Higgs mechanism) and the means by which elementary particles acquire mass. The leading explanation is that a field exists that has non-zero strength everywhere, even in otherwise empty space, and that particles acquire mass when interacting with this field; the higgs field. In other words the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles by way of interaction. According to this theory, the Higgs field permeates all space. 

Recently the media has referred to the Higgs boson as the "God particle", however scientists dislike this idea because it has nothing to do with God or any mystical associations. There's nothing special about this particle or field other than to just explain the properties proposed by Peter Higgs and prove whether the theory is right or wrong.

The Higgs particle is a boson, which is a particle that allows other particles to exist in the same place and in the same quantum state. The reason for this is because the proposed Higgs boson would have no spin, electric charge or color charge. It is however very unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately. All of this is consistent with the Standard Model, a model that has been proposed to explain everything that happens in the universe.

On July 4, 2012 the CMS and ATLAS experimental teams at the Large Hadron Collider independently announced that they each confirmed the formal discovery of a type of particle that so far has been consisted with a Higgs boson. More research may be needed in the future to determine if there are more particles of this type and to further increase our understanding of the universe.