A version of this piece was originally commissioned by the
Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason and also
appears on their website RichardDawkins.net. Read more: "LHC
sees hint of lightweight Higgs boson" As the world awaits news
of the possible discovery of the Higgs boson, there remains a
lot of confusion about what it is, why we have had to work hard
to find it – and why we should care. Here's why. First, the
short answer: If the Higgs is discovered, it will represent
perhaps one of the greatest triumphs of the human intellect in
recent memory, vindicating the construction of one of science's
greatest theories and the most complicated machine ever built.
That's the good news. But if the Higgs is all that is found at
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a huge amount will remain to be
discovered. Crucial experimental guidance that physicists need
to understand fundamental questions about our existence – from
whether all four forces in nature are unified in some grand
theory to determining what may h