In 2012, I shared with you my excitement regarding the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN in Higgs boson: our understanding of the universe is about to change.
If the Higgs boson is now introduced as the particle that blew up the universe, a recent article published by New Scientist raises the question: Believe it or not, this burst of cosmological inflation, followed by a slower, tamer expansion, is the most sensible way to explain how the universe looks today. But there’s something missing: what did the inflating?
The post’s author, Jon Cartwright, thinks the Higgs boson – the particle that gives mass, or inertia, to all other particles – might have an explosive secret: “If the Higgs gives inertia to particles,” says Juan García-Bellido at the Autonomous University of Madrid, “can it give inertia to the entire universe?”
And that is a very interesting question…
