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The Higgs boson was named after Peter Higgs, an Edinburgh physicist, and it is crucial to our understanding of the origin of mass.  It was discovered in July, 2012, after decades of intensive search, when it emerged within the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  The LHC is the world's largest particle accelerator, an instrument used by physicists to study the smallest known particles.  The Higgs boson, is believed to have been produced during the first moment of the Big Bang when the universe was born. Its existence is vitally important to discovering the early evolution of the universe.