From a text about the LHC: “Using high-energy particle collisions, physicists create new particles – and search among them for the Higgs boson. The search has been on for the past 30 years, using higher and higher energies, but the particle is still to be found – presumably the energies used so far have not been high enough. As it stands, the Higgs particle must have a mass at least 130 times that of the proton.”
Can something that is not matter still have mass?
Answer
Everything depends of course on the definition of “matter”, for which one normally takes: quarks and leptons (= the electron, the neutrino and their 2nd and 3rd generations). Bosons are not matter according to the strict definition, but they can indeed have mass. Mass is a property of elementary particles, whether they are considered matter or not, just like charge and spin.
The Higgs boson is indeed considered to have a mass, but the already well-known messenger particles of the weak interaction (W+,W- and Z0) also have mass, although they are also bosons, and therefore not matter according to the above definition.
You can find a nice treatment at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter
Answered by
prof.dr. Paul Hellings
Department of Mathematics, Fac. IIW, KU Leuven
Old Market 13 3000 Leuven
https://www.kuleuven.be/
.