Bulletin No. 2, 2012

24 Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2012 T hrough the ages, men have made strenuous effort to seek and interpret the origin of the universe from philosophical, religious or scientific perspectives. Recently, the most exciting and encouraging achievement was made in the quest for the mystical Higgs boson, a particle which gives mass to matter, whose existence has been speculated by physicists for decades. Physicists view the physical universe in terms of fields, forces, particles, energy and matter. The standard model of particle physics explains its working as a combination of the weak nuclear force, the strong force and electromagnetism. That’s all well and good, but there is a missing piece to the jigsaw. Where does the mass of the fundamental particles come from? And why do different particles have different masses? A half century ago, the Scottish physicist Prof. Peter Higgs theorized that there is an energy field which gives mass to particles trawled through it. Prof. Peter Higgs ©CERN ©CERN After the Higgs, What’s Next?