When streams of ultra-fast protons collide, a Higgs boson might pop into existence for the briefest instant before decaying into lighter particles.

In that moment, physicists can work backwards to estimate the mass of what could be the most important and yet most elusive particle in the Standard Model.

Having crunched the numbers on a mind-boggling number of proton collisions using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), physicists now have the most precise figure yet for this all-important property.