What is the Higgs boson?

The so-called ‘God particle’ is a force-carrier particle theorised by English physicist Peter Higgs to explain why matter has mass. His theory supposes that all particles had no mass immediately after the Big Bang, but an invisible force field (the ‘Higgs field’) condensed as the universe cooled, and any matter that interacted with it was given a mass via the Higgs boson. This, however, may be completely wrong, and if they can’t find this elusive particle at CERN (or at Fermilab, a rival American particle accelerator trying to beat them to it) the boffins will have to come up with a different theory altogether.

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