Higgs bosons are hypothetical elementary particles predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. These bosons may play a rather fundamental role: they may be the carrier particles of the Higgs field which is thought to permeate the universe and to give mass to other particles. They have not yet been observed but constitute what is known as the Higgs field. The Higgs field is the same perceived from every direction and is mostly indistinguishable from empty space.
The Higgs mechanism is a physical phenomenon that is responsible for the spontaneous breaking of the electroweak symmetry. Before the symmetry-breaking, all elementary particles (except the Higgs boson itself) are massless and the symmetry is unbroken, much like the rotational symmetry of a pencil that stands on its tip. However, the scalar field spontaneously slides from the point of maximum energy in a randomly chosen direction into a minimum - much like the pencil that eventually falls. This implies that the original symmetry is broken and elementary particles - such as the leptons, quarks, W boson, and Z boson acquire nonzero masses. The origin of the masses can be interpreted as a result of the interactions of the other particles with the "Higgs ocean".