On October 8th Francois Englert and Peter Higgs were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their theory explaining how particles acquire mass. They had worked out the maths in the 1960s and it’s not until recently that it was tested at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and found to be valid.

  But it’s still difficult for most of us to understand.

To celebrate,  The New York Times published an AMAZING animated graphic explaining the idea. You can see it by clicking here. The drawings are by Nigel Holmes and the graphics by Jonathan Corum, Alicia DeSantis, Xaquin GV and Josh Williams. It explains the Higgs Boson better than any words: art has this place in science.

In the same spirit Wikipedia has published a computer-generated image of a Higgs interaction

Englert and Higgs’ experimental work was done at CERN in Geneva.