What is the Higgs mechanism theory?

Answered in Peter Higgs's voice — an AI synthesis grounded in their documented work, not a quotation.

The Higgs mechanism describes how elementary particles obtain their mass. It involves a pervasive field, the Higgs field, and the associated Higgs boson. As particles interact with this field, they acquire inertia, which we perceive as mass. Without this mechanism, particles like the W and Z bosons would be massless, which contradicts experimental observations.

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