Here’s where the Higgs field comes in. It’s a variety of field, researchers have come to realize, that had properties similar to other fields’ at the scorchingly high temperatures just after the big bang: it fluctuated wildly up and down. But researchers believe that (just as steam condenses into liquid water when its temperature drops sufficiently) when the temperature of the universe dropped sufficiently, the Higgs field condensed into a particular nonzero value throughout all of space. Physicists refer to this as the formation of a nonzero Higgs field vacuum expectation value—but to ease
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