If you are interested in physics, you might have heard of something called the HIGGS BOSON particle.But before that lets look at the atomic structure.
We know that an atom is constituted of electrons,protons and neutrons.These particles were long thought to be the fundamental particles of the matter around us.But now we know that these particles are constituted of quarks. There are six types of quarks- up,down,top,bottom,charm and strange and they come in three different colors: red,green and blue. The term color is just a terminology and it doesn't mean that they actually have any color. A proton is made of two up quarks and one down quarks,all of different colors.A neutron is made of two down quarks and one up quark, all of different color. An amazing observation is the fact that a top quark is 350,000 times more heavier than an electron. The top quarks mass is equal to the mass of a complete gold atom. This observation was very difficult to explain and during this time a physicist named HIGGS proposed that there was a field throughout the space called HIGGS FIELD.
The effect of HIGGS FIELD is similar to that of water. A highly streamlined fish can easily swim through water without much drag.But a fat human in a pool would find it difficult to move quickly due to the drag of the water. Similarly HIGGS reasoned that the HIGGS FIELD would act upon all particles except photons and gravitons. He also suggested that this field was not similar to the fields of the other forces which needed a source for the field to exist. HIGGS field needed no source, it existed everywhere in space, every time. Because this field always existed, particles would continuously be acted upon by the field and this would create a sort of drag on the particle. This drag on the particle is what we feel as rest mass. So he reasoned that the quark interacted with the field more than the electron and hence was much more massive.
In classical physics fields were thought of as being continuous but quantum physics had done way with the idea of continuous distributions so fields were now explained on the basis of messenger particles and strength of the field depended on the density of particles at that point. This was why the HIGGS BOSON particle was defined.
HIGGS BOSON has been detected but this is the most popular theory explaining how mass works.
