With the discovery of the Higgs particle a long-proposed model on the generation of the masses of the elementary particles, called the “Higgs mechanism”, turned out to be true.
But does that affect our daily life?
Interestingly, the Higgs mechanism makes definite statements on the stability of the space in which we live and everything in the universe takes place. Our space could actually be less stable than we would wish.
In the presentation I explain the role of the Higgs-mechanism in our current understanding of the elementary particles and why particle physicists like me are certain that the Higgs particle has really been found at the LHC. I then talk about how the measured elementary particle masses affect the structure of the vacuum and which conclusions on its stability might be possible.
More information on this and two other Public Talks can be found here
A pdf of the talk slides can be downloaded here