Discovery of the Higgs boson

The discovery of the Higgs boson was a breakthrough in understanding fundamental physics. It confirmed the existence of a particle associated with the Higgs field, which gives mass to other particles like electrons and quarks. Scientists at CERN used the Large Hadron Collider to accelerate particles to high energies and then collided them. These collisions created conditions similar to those just after the Big Bang, producing the Higgs boson briefly. Detecting its telltale signals in the data verified the particle's existence in 2012, supporting the Standard Model, the theory describing fundamental forces and particles in our universe.