FILE – This undated image made available by CERN shows an experimental result in the search for the Higgs particle. The red lines depict traces of two high-energy photons. The yellow lines show tracks of other particles produced in the collision. Physicists Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of Britain have won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the two scientists for the “theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles.” (AP Photo/CERN, File)
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Nearly 50 years after they came up with the theory, but little more than a year since the world’s biggest atom smasher delivered the proof, Britain’s Peter Higgs and Belgian colleague Francois Englert won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for helping to explain how matter formed after the Big Bang.
Working independently in the 1960s, they came up with a theory for how the fundamental building blocks of the universe clumped together, gained mass and formed everything we see around us today. The theory hinged on the existence of a subatomic particle that came to be called the Higgs boson — or the “God particle.”
In one of the biggest breakthroughs in physics in decades, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced last year that they had finally found a Higgs boson using the $10 billion particle collider built in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel under the Swiss-French border.
In a statement issued by the University of Login to read more