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The Higgs boson’s most captivating puzzle still remains
Predicted way back in the 1960s, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 completed the Standard Model. Here’s why it remains fascinating.
In some ways, the deepest question one can ask about our physical reality is simply, “What is the Universe made of?” In the early 1800s, we thought we knew the answer: atoms. By the early 1900s, the answer had grown much richer: atoms themselves were composed of atomic nuclei and electrons, which were capable of both emitting and absorbing photons: particles of light. However, it was the 1932 discovery of the neutron — along with the puzzle of radioactive beta decay — that would kick of the series of events that led to our modern theoretical picture of particles in the Universe: the Standard Model of elementary particles, including quarks, leptons, and all of the force-carrying bosons.
Even though the last of the undiscovered particles of the Standard Model was finally found in 2012 with the announcement of the Higgs boson, our understanding of what the Universe is made of is still not complete. From a different perspective, we still don’t know:
- what dark matter and dark energy are made of (they’re not any of the Standard Model particles),
