Higgs boson

Higgs bosons are hypothetical elementary particles predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. These bosons may play a rather fundamental role: they may be the carrier particles of the Higgs field which is thought to permeate the universe and to give mass to all particles. They have not yet been observed but constitute what is known as the Higgs field.

The Higgs boson, sometimes called the God particle, (who knows why,) was first predicted in the 1960s by the Scottish physicist Peter Higgs.

The Higgs boson itself has mass. Theory gives an upper limit for this mass of about 200 GeV. As of 2002, particle accelerators have probed energies up to 115 GeV. While a small number of events have been recorded that could be interpreted as resulting from Higgs bosons, the evidence so far is inconclusive. It is expected that the Large Hadron Collider, currently under construction at CERN, will be able to confirm the existence of Higgs bosons.

Since the Higgs field is a scalar field, the Higgs boson has spin zero.