The Higgs boson and Higgs field explained with Simple Analogy

In the second half of the 20th century, physicists developed something called the standard model of particle physics.

Nearly all phenomenon and the underlying particles that make up the ultimate building blocks of the universe can be explained by this model, except gravity.

This model consists of 12 fundamental particles that make up all matter and four particles called bosons responsible for three fundamental forces of nature, strong force, the weak force, and electromagnetism.

Gravity is another force.

It is not part of this model, but it can be modeled using general relativity.

With the recipe provided in the Standard Model and gravity, we can pretty much build everything in the entire universe.

However, up until 2012, the Standard Model had a gaping flaw.

According to its underlying theory, all force-carrying particles should be massless.

So although the photon is indeed massless, experiments show that the weak forces bosons have mass.

So here was a promising model that could be used to explain our universe, but perhaps it would need to be thrown out because it had the seemingly fatal flaw in being inconsistent regarding the way the weak force worked.

In the late 1950s, physicists had no idea how to resolve these issues.

All attempts to solve this problem just seemed to create new theoretical problems.

Then in 1964, a group of physicists, including Peter Higgs, hypothesized that perhaps the force particles were massless, but gained mass when they interacted with an energy field that permeated the entire universe.

We tend to think of mass as an intrinsic property of all things, yet physicists believe that without the Higgs boson, mass fundamentally doesn't exist.

The Higgs field was thought to be responsible for the fact that some particles that should not have mass do.

It is, in a sense, the universal medium which gives particles their mass.

And without mass, the universe would not exist.