Space.com (Aug. 29) -- Six years after discovering the Higgs boson, physicists have observed how the particle decays – a monumental contribution to scientists’ understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics and the universe at large. “The Higgs boson is the least well-known and in many ways the most baffling particle in the standard model. Observing its decay to bottom quarks is a major milestone in our understanding of its properties,” says Jessie Shelton, a high-energy particle physicist at the U. of I. who was not involved in this research.