Brookhaven Lecture

In this lecture, we will explore one of the most profound discoveries in modern physics: the Higgs boson. Often referred to as the "God particle," the Higgs boson is a fundamental component of the Standard Model of particle physics, which seeks to explain the building blocks of the universe. Discovered in 2012 at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the Higgs boson provides a crucial answer to a long-standing mystery: how particles acquire mass. We will journey through the theoretical foundations, explaining the concept of the Higgs field and its role in the universe. We will cover the experimental challenges of detecting such an elusive particle, detailing the groundbreaking methods used in the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, developed here at BNL. Throughout the lecture we will get a deeper understanding of the Higgs boson's significance in the broader context of particle physics, and how this discovery will continue to shape our understanding of the universe and is guiding future upgrades of the ATLAS detector and future accelerators studies, which are being led by BNL teams.