THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER IN SCIENCE

Abstract

This article provides information and insight into the work of thousands of physicists around the world in their quest to find a unified way to understand the structure and interactions of elementary particles. The final missing piece in this puzzle, the Higgs boson, predicted 50 years ago and actively sought for the past two decades, was recently discovered in Switzerland. The discovery is a major breakthrough in physics, but many still don’t fully understand the significance of its role. The Higgs boson is the final piece of the Standard Model of particle physics. To understand how it relates to the Universe, think of the Standard Model as the code that governs everything in the universe. Just as computer code is made up of ones and zeros, the code for our universe is made up of laws that govern everything from people and air to water, planets, heat, and even social media. The Higgs boson plays a key role in this code because it explains how particles get their mass.