The universe is a fragile thing. it's just one tiny particle, but without it the world as we know it WOULD not exist. That's what scientists are saying after the recent discovery of the higgs boson particle, a subatomic speck related to the higgs field, which is thought to give mass to everything around us. Without the higgs boson, all the atoms created in the big bang would HAVE zipped around the cosmos too quickly to collect into stars and planets. so you can think of it as a building block of the universe - and of us!!