Higgs Boson Could Help Explain How We Exist
Newly detected particle could supply missing piece of cosmic puzzle.
Inside Science Buzzwords:
- Subatomic particle - A particle that makes up an atom, or is otherwise smaller than an atom.
- Higgs field - A field existing in space that gives subatomic particles their mass.
- Higgs boson- A particle from the Higgs field that, if detected and verified, could help explain how subatomic particles such as electrons and quarks get their mass.
- Atom - A basic building block of matter, made of negatively charged electrons surrounding a positively charged nucleus, itself consisting of protons and in most cases neutrons that are in turn composed of quarks.
- Matter - Anything that has mass and takes up space.
- Mass - A measure of the amount of matter in an object; often defined in terms of inertia, or an object's resistance to motion, and measured as the amount of force needed to accelerate an object.
- Massless - Objects such as photons (particles of light) that do not have mass.
- Weight - Distinct from mass, the amount of force on an object due to gravity; however, weight and mass are related in that an object's weight is its mass multiplied by the acceleration on the object due to gravity.
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