This story was originally published by ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published. For decades, physicists wrestled with a fundamental mystery of the universe. They wanted to know why certain particles — like the protons in atoms — have mass, while particles of light do not. Whatever the reason was, it was crucial to understanding the origins of planets, galaxies and life itself. The leading theory stated that particles got their mass from interacting with an invisible field, later dubbed the Higgs field, but no one...