3Qs: Searching for the “Holy Grail” of physics
Researchers at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, reported this week they are getting closer to discovering the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle that scientists believe will explain why everything in the universe has mass. The Higgs boson is considered to be the “Holy Grail” of particle physics, and finding it would be a great scientific advancement. We asked Emanuela Barberis, associate professor of physics, to explain the Higgs boson and what its discovery would mean to the world’s scientific community.