* For decades scientists have theorised the existence of a particle, called the Higgs boson, that explains how other particles acquire mass. The Higgs boson is believed to produce a field that interacts with particles and gives them a property we interpret as mass, explains Dr Kevin Varvell, of the University of Sydney in Australia. Dr Aldo Saavedra, a particle physicist also at the University of Sydney, made this comment as colleagues at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), near Geneva, switched on the Large Hadron Collider - "It would be really nice if nature actually provided some very puzzling thing that theories haven't actually thought of." In September 2008, renowned British astrophysicist Professor Stephen Hawking bet US$100 that the LHC experiment would not find the Higgs boson. "I think it will be much more exciting if we don't find the Higgs. That will show something is wrong, and we need to think again," says Hawking. Another aspect relating to matter’s appearance of possessing solidity and mass is - Morpho butterflies create colour by selectively adding and deleting certain wavelengths of light. Physicists have only recently devised comparable materials, called photonic band-gap crystals; and are now exploring their use in phone switches, solar cells and antennas. No surprise, then, that some engineers are looking to the living world for the next generation of optic inspirations. I believe advances in engineering and biology will enable humans, like the morpho butterfly, to selectively add and delete certain wavelengths of light. But the previous paragraph showed how anything and everything can be regarded as light (by e.g. superimposing electromagnetic and grav