Question: Can you tell me something about the Higgs Boson? all i know so far is that we havent discovered the actual boson itself but the field it sits on and that it gives everything mass but i am still left with the question how does it interact with the rest of the world?

Julian Onions answered on 7 Nov 2014:

We are pretty sure we have discovered a Higgs Boson. Initially scientist weren’t sure, but now they are pretty certain it matches what they were looking for. However depending on the theory, there may be more than one type of Higgs Boson, maybe up to 5 or possibly more!

The Higgs Boson as you say is actually something that comes out of the Higgs Field, which is all across the universe, everywhere. It’s a bit like a sticky fluid and most particles struggle through it, and that’s what gives them mass. Some particles just ignore it, and they travel at the speed of light instead.

If you excite the Higgs field, it gives off Higgs Bosons, but they are quite heavy for a particle, and very unstable, so they fragment into other particles very very quickly.

So really the field is the important thing, but the Boson it gives off is a way of detecting it.