Q&A: The Higgs boson

[hue]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16116236

Six theoreticians, including the English physicist Peter Higgs, first proposed the Higgs mechanism in 1964

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are continuing their hunt for the elusive Higgs boson, and could soon answer once and for all whether it exists.

But what exactly is it?

And why have particle physicists spent more than 40 years searching for the tiny fundamental particle?
What is the Higgs boson?

The Higgs so far definitively exists only in the minds of theoretical physicists. There is a nearly complete theory for how the Universe works - all of the particles that make up atoms and molecules and all the matter we see, along with more exotic particles. This is called the Standard Model. However, there is a glaring hole in the theory: it does not explain how it is that all those particles have mass. The Higgs mechanism was proposed in 1964 by six physicists, including the Edinburgh-based theoretician Peter Higgs, as an explanation to fill this hole....