Peter Higgs and Francois Englert will share the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theory that proposes a mechanism that explains why particles in the universe have mass.
The Higgs boson – the particle they theorized would exist — was subsequently discovered by scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
This is all very technical, and hard to grasp, so theoretical physicist Brian Greene joins Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson to explain what exactly the Higgs boson is, and why it is such a profoundly important concept.
- New York Times: An illustrated guide to understanding the Higgs boson
Guest
- Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University.
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