50 years of giant electroweak discoveries
Half a century ago, a series of tiny tracks in a bubble chamber at CERN changed the course of particle physics. The observation of “weak neutral currents”, announced on 19 July 1973 by Paul Musset of the Gargamelle collaboration, suggested that the electromagnetic and weak forces are facets of a more fundamental electroweak interaction that ruled in the early Universe. Exploring this new sector of nature has been a core business of CERN ever since, leading to the discovery of the W and Z bosons in 1983 and culminating with the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. The weak force is one of ...