Higgs boson

Postulated elementary particle whose existence would explain why particles have mass. The current theory of elementary particles, called the standard model, cannot explain how mass arises. To overcome this difficulty, Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Thomas Kibble of Imperial College, London, England, proposed in 1964 a new particle that binds to other particles and gives them their mass.

One of the major tasks of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN when it begins operation in 2007 will be to search for the Higgs boson.