[Moderator: You still have a few nagging
questions about that Higgs thing?

	You do not like them.  So you say.
	Try, them! Try them!
	And you may.
	Try them and you may, I say.
	-- Dr. Seuss - August 12, 1960

Well, here are some answers.  Try them!]

Minute Physics: The Higgs Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uh5mTxRQcg&feature=results_main

PHD Comics: The Higgs Boson Explained
http://vimeo.com/41038445

How the Higgs Gives Mass to the Universe
by Ethan Siegel
Starts With a Bang
July 4, 2012
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/07/04/how-the-higgs-gives-mass-to-the-universe/

    "This is evidently a discovery of a new particle. If
    anybody claims otherwise you can tell them they have
    lost connection with reality." -Tommaso Dorigo

You've probably heard the news by now: the Higgs boson -
the last undiscovered fundamental particle of nature -
has been found. 

The fundamental types of particles in the Universe, now
complete.

Indeed the news reports just keep rolling in; this is
easily the discovery of the century for physics, so far.
I'm not here to recap the scientific discovery itself; I
wrote what to expect yesterday, and that prediction was
pretty much exactly what happened, with CMS announcing a
4.9-s discovery and ATLAS announcing a 5.0-s discovery,
of a Higgs boson at 125-126 GeV. You can watch a
recording of the press conference announcing the
official discovery here, and all observing scientists
were thoroughly convinced of both the quality and
veracity of the work. 5 sigma annoucement

So, the Higgs boson has been discovered! That's good
news. You may have also heard that the Higgs gives mass
to everything in the Universe, and that it's a field.

The odd thing is that all of these things are true, if
not intuitive. There are some attempts to explain it
simply, but as you can see, even the top ones are not
very clear. So let's give you something to sink your
teeth into: How do fundamental particles, including the
Higgs boson, get their mass? Cow Moose in a Rain Storm

The Higgs field is like rain, and there is no place you
can go to keep dry. Just like there's no way to shield
yourself from gravitation, there's no way to hide from
the rain that is the Higgs field.

If there were no Higgs field, all the fundamental
particles would be like dried-out sponges. Massless,
dried-out sponges. 

You have to use your imagination, if only slightly, for
the massless part.

But you can't keep these sponges out of the rain, and
when you can't stop them from getting wet, they carry
that water with them. Some sponges can only carry a
little bit of water, while others can expand to many
times their original size, carrying very large amounts
of water with them once they're fully expanded.
Compressed Sponge

The most massive fundamental particles are the ones that
couple most strongly to the Higgs field, and are like
the sponges that expand the most and hold the most water
in the rain. Of all the particles I've shown you, atop,
there are just two that are truly massless, and hence
don't couple to the Higgs at all: the photon and the
gluon.

They can be represented by massless sponges, too, except
they are water repellent. 

So, the Higgs field is rain, all the particles are like
various types of sponges (with various absorbancies),
and then. then there's the Higgs Boson. How can the
field - the rain - be a particle, too? 

If it weren't raining - if there were no source of water
- your intended water balloon would be a sad failure. If
there were no Higgs field, there wouldn't be a Higgs
boson; at least, not one of any interest, and not one
with any mass.

But the water comes from the Higgs field, and it also
fills the balloon that is the Higgs boson: the Higgs
field gives mass to all the particles that couple to the
Higgs field, including the Higgs boson itself!

Without the water, the balloons and the sponges would be
far less interesting, and without the Higgs field, the
Higgs boson and all the other fundamental particles
would have no intrinsic mass to them. It's only kind of
like the Higgs boson

So now you not only know that we've found the Higgs
Boson, but how the Higgs field gives mass to all the
particles in the Universe, including the newly-
discovered boson itself. Just like water can seep its
way into almost anything, making it heavier, the Higgs
field couples to almost all types of fundamental
particles - some more than others - giving them mass.

And the great new find? We've been able to create and
detect enough Higgs Bosons at the Large Hadron Collider
to confidently announce - for the first time - that
we've discovered it, that we've determined its mass
(around 133 times the mass of a proton), and that it
agrees perfectly with what our understanding of the
Universe currently is.

Our Political Black Hole
By GAIL COLLINS
New York Times
Published: July 6, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/opinion/our-political-black-hole.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212_20120707

Scientists in Geneva announced this week that they had
found a new subatomic particle that they were 99.999999
percent sure was the elusive Higgs boson, nicknamed the
"God particle." Even though we had no earthly idea what
that meant, we were definitely excited.

It's given us so much to think about: how existence
began, the structure of the universe, the difference
between bosons and fermions. And, of course, what it
will mean to the presidential race.

The first thing all patriotic Americans are going to
want to know is why something this important happened
elsewhere. The Large Hadron Collider, where the
physicists did the work, was built by the European
Organization for Nuclear Research. We were building a
Superconducting Super Collider of our own, in
Waxahachie, Tex., but Congress stopped the financing for
it in 1993.

"It's disheartening that a large number of fairly
intelligent people could do such a thing," said Leon
Lederman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, when the
budget-cutting House of Representatives ended the
program. This was, of course, a long time ago, back when
Americans still undertook expensive, daring construction
projects and believed the House of Representatives had a
large number of fairly intelligent people.

But about the Higgs boson. As Dennis Overbye explained
in The Times, it is "the only manifestation of an
invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates
space and imbues elementary particles with mass." And we
have so many questions. Does it provide evidence of the
existence of parallel worlds? If so, is it possible to
move to one that doesn't have Michele Bachmann?

Most of all, however, we want to know who this helps in
the election:

WOLFEBORO, N.H. - Mitt Romney today denounced Barack
Obama for allowing Europe to beat the United States at
particle physics research. Under his administration,
Romney vowed, "All particles that bind the earth
together will be discovered in America, by Americans and
for Americans."

Under questioning from reporters, Romney said that his
favorite kind of subatomic particle is the fermion.

SOMEWHERE ON A BUS - Speaking to a crowd of blue-collar
workers in Ohio, President Barack Obama hailed the
scientific news from Geneva as "a great moment in
history, not unlike my rescue of the auto industry." The
physicists who made the discovery, Obama noted, all had
health insurance.

TRENTON - Gov. Chris Christie today called for the
privatization of the Higgs boson. "Binding the earth
together is something that could be handled much more
efficiently by the for-profit sector," the Republican
governor and deeply available vice-presidential prospect
said. "Auctioning off the rights to the Higgs boson will
create American jobs and balance American budgets."

When a reporter noted that the boson was discovered in
Switzerland, Christie called him "stupid" and "off-
topic."

CEDAR FALLS, IOWA - Rick Santorum today denounced the
European Organization for Nuclear Research for
discovering something that is nicknamed the God
particle. "If God had wanted there to be a particle,
he'd have given it to Adam and Eve," said Santorum, who
is traveling through the Hawkeye State this week
because, really, he doesn't have much else to do.

WOLFEBORO, N.H. - Aides to Mitt Romney said the former
governor's favorite kind of subatomic particle is
actually the boson.

SOMEWHERE ELSE ON A BUS - President Barack Obama told a
crowd of blue-collar workers that there have been more
Higgs bosons discovered during his administration than
during those of both George Bushes combined.

WOLFEBORO, N.H. - Mitt Romney said today that when he
called for an American effort to beat the Europeans in
particle physics research, he did not actually mean
spending money to build a supercollider, but merely "the
need for our physicists to think harder." The Republican
presidential contender said he believed this could be
accomplished by "the elimination of onerous, physics-
research-killing regulations."

JUST OUTSIDE OF WOLFEBORO, N.H. - Protesters today
passed out cartoons of Mitt Romney with a large, cuddly
looking Higgs boson strapped to a crate on the front of
his jet ski.

WASHINGTON - Surrogates for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney
sparred over the meaning of the potential discovery of
the Higgs boson. On "Meet the Press," Gov. Bobby Jindal
of Louisiana called it "a questionable throw of the dice
by the same folks who gave us the euro."

On "Face the Nation," David Axelrod, the Obama campaign
communications director, said that if the Large Hadron
Collider had been acquired by Bain Capital it would have
been "burdened with debt and sold for scrap metal" and
that Romney would be "the most anti-physics president
since Franklin Pierce."

NEW YORK - Donald Trump told reporters that "my people
in Hong Kong" have uncovered evidence that America's
failure to take the lead in subatomic particle research
was because of a conspiracy between the Obama
administration and unnamed Chinese industrialists. He
also said that he had invited the Higgs boson to be a
contender on "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice."

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