Editing History of physics (section)

===Higgs boson===
[[File:CMS Higgs-event.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|One possible signature of a Higgs boson from a simulated [[proton]]–proton collision. It decays almost immediately into two jets of [[hadron]]s and two electrons, visible as lines.]]
On July 4, 2012, physicists working at CERN's [[Large Hadron Collider]] announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle greatly resembling the [[Higgs boson]], a potential key to an understanding of why elementary particles have mass and indeed to the existence of diversity and life in the universe.<ref name="nytimes.com">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/cern-physicists-may-have-discovered-higgs-boson-particle.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&ref=science |work=The New York Times |first=Dennis |last=Overbye |title=Physicists Find Particle That Could Be the Higgs Boson |date=4 July 2012}}</ref> For now, some physicists are calling it a "Higgslike" particle.<ref name="nytimes.com"/> [[Joe Incandela]], of the [[University of California, Santa Barbara]], said, "It's something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years, going way back to the discovery of [[quark]]s, for example."<ref name="nytimes.com"/> [[Michael Turner (cosmologist)|Michael Turner]], a cosmologist at the University of Chicago and the chairman of the physics center board, said:

{{blockquote |"This is a big moment for particle physics and a crossroads – will this be the high water mark or will it be the first of many discoveries that point us toward solving the really big questions that we have posed?"|author=[[Michael Turner (cosmologist)|Michael Turner]], University of Chicago<ref name="nytimes.com"/>}}

[[Peter Higgs]] was one of six physicists, working in three independent groups, who, in 1964, invented the notion of the Higgs field ("cosmic molasses"). The others were [[Tom Kibble]] of [[Imperial College London|Imperial College, London]]; [[C. R. Hagen|Carl Hagen]] of the [[University of Rochester]]; [[Gerald Guralnik]] of [[Brown University]]; and [[François Englert]] and [[Robert Brout]], both of [[Université libre de Bruxelles]].<ref name="nytimes.com"/>

Although they have never been seen, Higgslike fields play an important role in theories of the universe and in string theory. Under certain conditions, according to the strange accounting of Einsteinian physics, they can become suffused with energy that exerts an antigravitational force. Such fields have been proposed as the source of an enormous burst of expansion, known as inflation, early in the universe and, possibly, as the secret of the dark energy that now seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.<ref name="nytimes.com"/>

{{clear left}}