Two of the scientists involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 have been knighted as part of Queen Elizabeth II's list of Birthday Honours. Professors Tom Kibble and Tejinder Virdee, both of Imperial College London, were integral to the discovery of the elusive particle, albeit in different ways.
That Stephen Hawking, always looking for trouble. In a speech at the London Science Museum, the physicist said "physics would be far more interesting" if scientists had been unable to find evidence of the Higgs boson. Of course this would have been interesting—the Higgs boson was predicted to exist if the prevailing theory of how matter and energy work is true. The model is even called the Standard Model. Here's how CERN describes it:
On July 4, 2020, a panel of scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva announced the discovery of a new particle, the long-anticipated Higgs boson (or something very much like it). The Higgs is the final piece of the Standard Model of particle physics, a theory that accounts for everything we experience in our lives, from rocks to puppies to stars and planets. After decades of searching and billions of dollars, the Higgs discovery marked the end of one era and the beginning of another, which scientists will embark upon in 2013.
Researchers at CERN and the world over were already sure they had found the Higgs Boson - five-sigma sure - but in case there were any lingering doubts a new round of results coming out of Geneva further backs the earlier findings. One team there now reports a 5.9 sigma level of certainty that the Higgs exists. That equates to a one-in-550 million chance that the results are incorrect reflections of statistical errors.
There's no way to take a direct picture of something as small and fleeting as a Higgs boson. But physicists can photograph its relatives, directly imaging atomic structures and improving our understanding of atomic physics. Now comes this picture: The first-ever snapshot of a single atom's shadow.