You're such a BOSON!

Reports are out. They have finally found the mysterious Higgs Boson, or the "God Particle" (apparently, derived from "Goddammed Particle").

What is this Boson? Below is an excerpt from http://physicsforme.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/higgs-boson-one-page-explanation/ , where several explanations for the Higgs Boson are posted. I found this one relatively simple, if you have a high school physics background...and actually remember it:

"The Need to Understand Mass

By Roger Cashmore Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK.

What determines the size of objects that we see around us or indeed even the size of ourselves? The answer is the size of the molecules and in turn the atoms that compose these molecules. But what determines the size of the atoms themselves? Quantum theory and atomic physics provide an answer. The size of the atom is determined by the paths of the electrons orbiting the nucleus. The size of those orbits, however, is determined by the mass of the electron. Were the electron’s mass smaller, the orbits (and hence all atoms) would be smaller, and consequently everything we see would be smaller. So understanding the mass of the electron is essential to understanding the size and dimensions of everything around us.

It might be hard to understand the origin of one quantity, that quantity being the mass of the electron. Fortunately nature has given us more than one elementary particle and they come with a wide variety of masses. The lightest particle is the electron and the heaviest particle is believed to be the particle called the top quark, which weighs at least 200,000 times as much as an electron. With this variety of particles and masses we should have a clue to the individual masses of the particles.
Unfortunately if you try and write down a theory of particles and their interactions then the simplest version requires all the masses of the particles to be zero. So on one hand we have a whole variety of masses and on the other a theory in which all masses should be zero. Such conundrums provide the excitement and the challenges of science.

There is, however, one very clever and very elegant solution to this problem, a solution first proposed by Peter Higgs. He proposed that the whole of space is permeated by a field, similar in some ways to the electromagnetic field. As particles move through space they travel through this field, and if they interact with it they acquire what appears to be mass. This is similar to the action of viscous forces felt by particles moving through any thick liquid. the larger the interaction of the particles with the field, the more mass they appear to have. Thus the existence of this field is essential in Higg’s hypothesis for the production of the mass of particles.

We know from quantum theory that fields have particles associated with them, the particle for the electromagnetic field being the photon. So there must be a particle associated with the Higg’s field, and this is the Higgs boson. Finding the Higgs boson is thus the key to discovering whether the Higgs field does exist and whether our best hypothesis for the origin of mass is indeed correct."

So, what does this mean for us?! I have no idea. I'm not a physicist, and so apart from the "Physics" implications, I'm not quite sure how this discovery would trickle down to us, mere humans. If you know, please comment, illuminate, educate.

Initially, there were concerns about the consequences of building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the actual instrument of Boson discovery (where sub-atomic particles are smashed together at superspeed to create conditions simulating those during the Big Bang). An experiment gone wrong could destroy the entire earth. In fact, according to http://www.vulture.com/, Bad Robot and Paramount will be making a science fiction disaster movie called the "God Particle" sometime in the future. The idea is that the Earth has been tossed into oblivion after an LHC experiment goes awry and the only humans left are the occupants of a space station, until they encounter a European Spacecraft and...stuff happens.

OK, so now what? If this truly is the predicted God Particle, how will it change the universe as we know it. If this is the article that gives mass, perhaps we'll find a way to reverse the process and take mass away, let's say...air travel, architecture, floating communities? Wrong track? Maybe. Again, I'm not a physicist!

Could this new discovery aid future physics savvy terrorists? Could it solve our overcrowding problem? Pollution? Accessible food materials?

This Higgs particle is just one more significant step in explaining our universe and what holds it together, the Big Bang, why we exist, and how we exist as we do. I have no idea how it's going to affect my life as an individual, but, fine, I'll toast to Higgs and his Boson!