‘Higgs Boson Blues’: between science and pop culture
In order to define the Higgs field, it was necessary to find the associated particle, also known popularly as the Holy Grail of the quantum world, the secret melody or the particle of God As a matter of fact, there is a song by Nick Cave called Higgs Boson Blues. It is a sad sort of song, delivered in a broken voice, as if by a crooner of the dark; a song where the search and the journey are described in a tone that sounds more sinister than familiar. This gives some sense of the impact that the discovery of the Higgs boson had at the popular level. But what is the Higgs boson? The Higgs boson is an elementary particle relating to mass, a property without which the universe could not have been created. Scientific curiosity applied to the Higgs boson shows us that mass expresses the resistance formed by the Higgs quantum field. This field extends throughout the universe, and it is named after the physicist who discovered it, Peter Higgs. But let’s avoid confusi