The Large Hadron Collider: What the Higgs boson revealed to physicists.
summer 2012 is one for the books – the first Avengers movie has just hit theaters around the world, and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” is dominating the charts. And oh yeah, physicists across the ocean at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have just discovered a world-altering particle called the Higgs boson. Theorized for decades leading up to its discovery on July 4, 2012, the Higgs boson is a subatomic particle that has the power to confirm or destroy the most comprehensive theory of physics to date, the Standard Model. As the LHC begins the process of destroying its third atom, scientists have taken steps to Natural to reflect on what a decade of Higgs research means for how we understand physics and the world it describes. Giulia Zanderighi is director of the particle physics group at the Max Planck Institute for Physics and co-author of the perspective published this week in Natural on the Higgs warning. He told Backwards that CERN’s Higgs boson research is still invest