higgs boson?

Question

can someone explain to me what the higgs boson is? i read something about it being the reason particles have mass, would that be true?

Answer 1

Keeping in mind that this is a simplification of a summary of a simplification (and you might want to check the Wikipedia entry for Higgs Boson for a mere summary of a simplification):

The idea is that everything comes from interactions of some sort. There's no such thing as "just is", things only exist if they can be measured, and measurement requires interaction. Charge, for example, comes from interaction of photons. But what does mass come from? The best candidate for the interaction particle that results in mass is the Higgs Boson. Higgs after the guy who proposed it, Boson because it's a kind of particle that Bose described (everything can be split into Bosons and Fermions, based on spin).

Unfortunately, while we've got plenty of evidence of photons, we don't have any experimental proof that Higgs Bosons exist.

Answer 2

The Standard Model of particle physics is the most useful physics model we have so far. So far, all testable predictions have been confirmed. Its weakness, of course, is dealing with gravity. This model predicts the Higgs Boson as the mediator of mass. It hasn't been detected, but that could be just because of its high energy, not because it doesn't exist. So, we do not yet know whether it is true.