South-Western Germany. Perfect location to reach Geneva. And Geneva, with CERN, in 2015 is basically physicists’ Mecca.
Although I am not a particle physicist, when I finished my high school in humanities, my love for neutrinos was the reason to start this new adventure in the world of science. Ever since, I have been fascinated by particle physics, making material science (my actual field of study) almost jealous. My secret love for tiny particles is why, about three years ago, I was standing over-excited in front on my laptop waiting for one of the biggest announcement of recent times: the first evidences for the Higgs boson. It was a historical moment, the Woodstock of physics.
The Higgs boson represents the excitation of the Higgs field, thought to be responsible for the mass of fundamental particles. The Standard Model, the big puzzle in which all discovered particles fitted ever since, at first sight did not predict any mass for any of those. The introduction of the Higgs field seems to solve the mystery, associating to a particle a mass proportional to the strength of the interaction with the field. The evidence of a particle of mass ~125 GeV by the two detectors CMS and ATLAS at CERN, confirmed the presence of the field and earned Higgs and Englert a deserved Nobel Prize. Happily ever after. The end.
The end?
