Theory holds that particles acquire mass by interacting with a field which permeates space.
To understand the Higgs mechanism, imagine that a room full of physicists
chattering quietly is like space filled with the Higgs field ...
A well-known scientist walks in, creating a disturbance as he moves across the room and attracting a cluster of admirers with each step.
This increases his resistance to movement, in other words, he acquires mass, just like a particle moving through the Higgs field...
If a rumor crosses the room,
It creates the same kind of clustering, but this time among the scientists themselves. In this analogy, these clusters are the Higgs particles
The book "Divine particle" of Leon Lederman's (Nobel Prize, for discovering mionic neutrino)
is a dream about Higgs, “if it is only one” - like he adds honestly.
Experiments performed at CERN in 2001, shortly before closing electron-positron accelerator
(LEP) suggested a possibility that higgs (maybe two of them) appeared at about 114 GeV energy. Theory does not reject this value neither confirms it. To catch higgs at CERN, a more powerful device, a hadronic collider LHC is under construction (its start is predicted for 2007).
" To define in complete way standard model we need twenty or even more parameters and constants, not defined by a theory: among the others the force of coupling between
strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions, masses of quarks and leptons and other parameters which define interactions with Higgs boson. Besides there exist at least 34 components of the matter, which seem to be elementar particles of interactions agents: 15 quarks [18 today, 2003] (five [six] tastes of each one in three colors), six leptons, eight gluons, three bosons of the weak interactions and a hypothetical Higgs' boson.
In the matter of the simplicity, standard model seems to be no progress in comparison to ancient visions ot the matter consisting with
earth, water, air and fire, interacting by friendship and
conflict."
Chris Quigg, Scientific American, June 1985.
Chris Quigg, in time of writing of that text was and director faculty of theoretical physics in Fermilab in Baravia (Illinois) and physics professor at University of Chicago.
