Where the Higgs belongs
Bosons are particles that carry the four fundamental forces. These forces push and pull what would otherwise have been an unwieldy soup of particles into the beautiful mosaic of stars and galaxies that permeate the visible universe.
The fundamental forces keep protons incredibly stable (the strong force holds them together), cause compasses to point north (the electromagnetic force attracts the needle), make apples fall off trees (gravity attracts the fruit to the ground), and keep the sun shining (the weak force allows nuclear fusion to occur).
The Higgs is called a boson because of a quantum mechanical property called spin—which represents a particle’s intrinsic angular momentum and characterizes how a particle plays with its Standard Model friends.
Bosons have an integer spin (0, 1, 2) which makes them the touchy-feely types. They have no need for personal space. Fermions, on the other hand, have a non-integer spin (1/2, 3/2, etc.), which makes them a bit more isolated; they prefer to keep their distance from other particles.
The Higgs has a spin of 0, making it officially a boson.
“Every boson is associated with one of the four fundamental forces,” says Kyle Cranmer, an associate professor of physics at New York University. “So if we discover a new boson, it seems natural that we should find a new force.”