10-18 meters = 1 attometer

In late 2007, the world's most powerful particle collider will be completed at CERN. This event has been anticipated by experimental and theoretical physicists for several years. After a year of testing and preliminary results, the Tevatron is anticipated to begin the search for the next theoretical goal in high energy physics — the search for the Higgs boson and the superpartner particles predicted by Superstring theory.

In the 1980s, early String theory predicted the existence of superpartners for all the existing elementary particles. For every 1/2-integer spin particle (fermions) there should be a heavier, integer spin particle. For every integer spin particle (bosons) there should be a heavier, 1/2-integer spin superpartner.

The Higgs boson is a force particle, similar to the photon or gluon, that is predicted by Superstring theory. The special importance of the Higgs boson is that it is required by current theory in order to provide the characteristic masses of the elementary particles. The Standard Model requires the masses of the elementary particles as inputs to the theory. For instance, the mass of the electron must be measured by other means and then used as an input to the Standard Model. The hope is that the Higgs boson, when found, can allow physicists to calculate the masses of the elementary particles.