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PBS Space Time

How the Higgs Mechanism Give Things Mass

Season 8 Episode 13

Fermilab physicists really care about the mass of the W boson. They spent nearly a decade recording collisions in the Tevatron collider and another decade analyzing the data. This culminated in the April 7 announcement that this obscure particle’s mass seems to be heavier than expected. Understanding why this particle even has mass was one of the most important breakthroughs in our understanding.

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