Web edition: July 4, 2012 By now, all aficionados of physics
news — and quite a few people who don’t know physics from
phonics — have heard about the discovery of the Higgs boson.
It’s the biggest news in physics ever tweeted. And it came after
a long wait. For more than three decades, the Higgs has been
physicists’ version of King Arthur’s Holy Grail, Ponce de Leon’s
Fountain of Youth, Captain Ahab’s Moby Dick. It’s been an
obsession, a fixation, an addiction to an idea that almost every
expert believed just had to be true. But despite years of
searching, using the most complex machines ever built on the
planet, the Higgs remained as elusive as a World Series ring for
a Chicago Cub. Until now. Physicists at the Large Hadron
Collider have finally established the existence of a new
particle, weighing in at a mass of about 11 dozen protons.
Although the official announcement of the new particle was
cautiously worded, everybody assumes it’s the Higgs. Asked why
the Higgs boson is so important, most physicists re