“The God Particle” is a sexy name, but many physicists absolutely hate it. It’s also led people to think that maybe the discovery of the Higgs boson has something to do with the search for God, but it doesn’t. Its discovery isn’t evidence of any sort of higher being and that’s not why scientists were searching for it. In Part 1 of this series about the Higgs boson, Julian takes an in-depth look at this discovery.

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The particle’s discovery may not resolve the debate about God, but it was nonetheless a huge advancement of our understanding of the universe. The Higgs Boson made the behavior of other particles we’ve discovered make sense, it explained how atoms could exist and stars could shine. It was the last big piece of a fantastically complex jigsaw puzzle, and it’s not like scientists had a picture on a box to guide them.

The Higgs Boson was the last piece of a puzzle, and in a literal sense that’s true. It was the last particle predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which is our framework for organizing and describing elementary particles.

The Standard Model is split into two main groups. One group is the fermions, which are particles like electrons and quarks, the building blocks of protons and neutrons. The other group is the bosons, which particles use to exchange energy.

Photons, Gluons, and the W and Z bosons are called gauge bosons. Then there’s the Higgs boson, which is special. It’s not the boson itself that’s so important, but its existence points to something larger that solves a big problem with the standard model.

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Read More:
The Man Who Coined 'The God Particle' Explains: It Was A Joke!
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-w...
“We've explained it many times: Physicists are irked when we in the media call the Higgs Boson, "The God Particle." The Higgs is important because the elusive subatomic particle is believed to give everything its mass. But as Marcelo Gleiser — of NPR's 13.7 — explained, the nickname doesn't quite explain the particle because while it "does have something of a centralizing influence," it's "nothing quite divine."”

DOE Explains...the Standard Model of Particle Physics
https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-ex...
“The Standard Model of Particle Physics is scientists’ current best theory to describe the most basic building blocks of the universe. It explains how particles called quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) and leptons (which include electrons) make up all known matter. It also explains how force carrying particles, which belong to a broader group of bosons, influence the quarks and leptons.”

The Higgs boson
https://home.cern/science/physics/hig...
“A problem for many years has been that no experiment has observed the Higgs boson to confirm the theory. On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced they had each observed a new particle in the mass region around 125 GeV.”


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Seeker+ is your home for deep dives, fun facts, rabbit holes, and more. Join host Julian Huguet as he unapologetically nerds out on the oddball history, astounding science and intriguing future around topics that will make you the smartest person at your next trivia night.
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