What gives things their mass?

It has been a long time since scientist first collided sub-atomic particles and in the process discovered that protons and neutrons aren’t the smallest components of an atom. They have been made by even smaller gluons and quarks. The Large Hadron Collider is going to be doing the exact same thing but with much more power and precision (It would be like firing two needles across the Atlantic and making sure that they hit each other).

Beams would be fired from the two side of the tunnel trying to smash protons around the speed of light in an attempt to create conditions microseconds after the big bang and discover new particles. The experiment could also prove the existence of Higgs boson; explaining what gives things their mass.

Here is what the TIME magazine reports.

"Higgs theory proposes the existence of a single particle responsible for imparting mass to all things — a speck so precious it has come to be known as the "God particle…Higgs theorized a mechanism to explain how two types of particle, mass less like everything else immediately after the Big Bang, came to acquire different masses as the universe cooled...Working from Higgs' theory, scientists postulate that initially weightless particles move through a ubiquitous quantum field, known as a Higgs field, like a pearl necklace through a jar of honey. Some particles, such as photons — weightless carriers of light — can cut through the sticky Higgs field without picking up mass. Others get bogged down and become heavy; that is the process that creates tangible matter”
One scientist said, "there is a possibility that after the experiment it is proven that this elusive particle just simply don’t exist. The most interesting discovery would be that we could not find the Higgs, proving practically that it isn’t there; meaning we really haven’t understood something. Revolutions sometimes come when you hit a wall and you realize that you truly haven’t understood something...". Salute to the perseverance of these guys.

Ofcourse there is a lingering fear among people that micro blackholes created during this process would become large enough by 2012 (the year in which Nostradamus and Mayan calendar predict doomsday to occur) to engulf this earth but these fears have been rejected by scientists; the likes of Stephen Hawking.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1729139,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1840151,00.html