The Higgs particle is a massive elementary particle that was first predicted by Peter Higgs, Robert Brout, and Francois Englert in 1964. It was experimentally confirmed by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in 2012.

The Higgs particle is responsible for giving mass to all other elementary particles. It does this by interacting with the Higgs field, which is a field of energy that permeates all of space. When an elementary particle interacts with the Higgs field, it acquires a mass.

The Higgs particle is also thought to be responsible for the stability of the universe. If the Higgs particle were not present, the universe would have collapsed in on itself shortly after the Big Bang.

The Higgs particle has a mass of about 126 GeV/c2, which is about 126 times the mass of a proton. It is also very short-lived, with a half-life of only about 10-22 seconds.

Despite its short half-life, the Higgs particle could have ended the universe by now if its self-coupling were large enough. The self-coupling of a particle is a measure of how strongly it interacts with itself. If the self-coupling of the Higgs particle were large enough, it could have caused the Higgs field to become unstable, which would have led to the collapse of the universe.

However, the self-coupling of the Higgs particle is very small, which is why it has not ended the universe. The smallness of the Higgs particle's self-coupling is one of the biggest mysteries in physics and is the subject of much research.