Higgs particle event simulation (A142/0422) Pillow

Simulated detection of Higgs boson. Computer simulation of an event in which the decay of a Higgs boson produces four muons (white tracks). The muons, along with countless other particles (yellow tracks and red dots), are produced in a head-on collision between two protons. The Higgs boson is a localised clustering in the Higgs field that permeates space; local distortions of the field are thought to be the way that particles gain mass. This image shows how the Higgs boson might be seen in the CMS detector on the Large Hadron Collider, which is due to start operation at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, in 2007-2009.