THEORETICAL physicists have long asked themselves why matter has mass, since at the moment of the Big Bang, there was no mass.
Professor Higgs proposed that a minute fraction of a second after the Big Bang, a field switched on throughout the universe.
This interacted with all the newly created particles, slowing them down from the speed of light and hence giving them mass - the Higgs field.
One analogy to explain how the Higgs Field works is given by Professor David Miller, emeritus professor of physics at University College London, who likens it to a gathering of political party workers.
When a senior politician enters, nearby activists cluster around her, slowing her down as she crosses the room - giving her mass.
So the field becomes locally distorted when a particle - politician - moves through it.
Here and there are individuals who have no interest in the politician and pass straight through the "field" at a steady pace: they are massless particles.
So why the Higgs boson? Isn't that a particle? Mr Miller describes a rumour passing through the room.
The rumour is passed from one activist to another, forming a wave of clustering throughout the room.
These clusters also have mass.
The Higgs boson is thought to be a clustering of this sort in the Higgs field.
Generating the boson - by smashing particles together in the Large Hadron Collider - proved the existence of the field. The theory is punishingly complicated - which is why Mr Higgs got a Nobel Prize for it.
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