Find two physical systems that follow the same rules, and you can swap one for the other

Eventually, then, the “real” Higgs was found without the help of any clues from superconductors. But the discovery comes at a time when the analogues are at last poised to really come into their own, says Marie-Aude Méasson of Paris-Diderot University CNRS in France. That is in part because there has been an explosion of sightings of things like Higgs particles: not just in superconductors, but also in clouds of rubidium atoms chilled into the same quantum state and in certain types of magnet. Joint conferences and research projects are now springing up to try to share intelligence. “As the examples build up, many researchers are now convinced there will be cross-fertilisation between the analogues and particle physics,” says Méasson.