evidence: The existence of this mass-giving field was confirmed in 2012, when the Higgs boson particle was discovered at CERN. [...] Physicists look for traces of these particles in data collected by the detectors. The challenge is that these particles are also produced in many other processes, plus the Higgs boson only appears in about one in a billion LHC collisions. But careful statistical analysis of enormous amounts of data uncovered the particle's faint signal in 2012. [...] The Higgs boson has, and will continue to have, an impact on our lives, in ways you may not have imagined.