What is a Higgs Particle?

The Higgs particle is as yet a hypothetical particle invoked to explain why the carriers of the electroweak force (the W and Z bosons) have mass. Quantum electrodynamics requires the photon to have zero mass (which is good because indeed it does), but early attempts to develop an electroweak theory also required the bosons to be massless, (which is bad because then they would be as abundant as the photon in the universe, which indeed they are not). Peter Higgs and two Belgian researchers (who worked independently of Higgs) come across the same idea for settling the puzzle in 1964. If there is an otherwise undetectable field filling the universe (now called the Higgs field), it could have associated with it a previously unknown kind of boson, the Higgs particle, which has mass. This would allow any photon-like particle to become massive by swallowing up a Higgs boson. It is possible, but not proven, that all-massive particles get their mass this way.