Events

On July 4th 2012 the CMS and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN announced the discovery of a new particle. This new particle, which has a mass about 130 times greater than the proton mass, was confirmed to be the long sought after Higgs boson. While it ranks as probably the most important discovery in my (long) career in particle physics, this seems an appropriate moment to reflect on the importance of this discovery after the initial euphoria has worn off. It is a question my non-physics friends and my congressman asked me; namely, "Awesome, this is a great discovery, but... so what?" It is a serious question that deserves a serious answer; and I would like to give you my view on the answer.