New boson: what’s so cool about it? Try this video

On July 4, 2012, scientists at CERN announced that experiments with the Large Hadron Collider had revealed an elementary particle consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson. They’re not entirely sure it is the Higgs, although everyone seems to agree it is a boson. What’s a boson? As a good article in New Scientist explains it this way:

There are only two types of elementary particle in the standard model: fermions, which include electrons, quarks and neutrinos, and bosons, which include photons and the W and Z bosons.

If you’re lost already, but want to know more, the video below from the folks at MinutePhysics (whose motto is “cool physics and other sweet science”) might shed some light on what’s cool about the Higgs boson, and why scientists are so intent on finding it. This is just Part 1, by the way. Parts 2 and 3 are coming.

CERN’s original press release announcing what they found

History of search for the Higgs