Teams of scientists using the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, announced in Geneva this morning that they have detected evidence of a new subatomic particle that bears the hallmarks of the elusive and highly sought after Higgs boson. In layman's terms, the Higgs is referred to as the "God Particle" because the field it produces gives atoms its mass. Were it not for the Higgs, the world we know would be completely different — there would be no chemistry, no architecture, no us. It would be a massless mess of aimless particles running around at light speed.

CERN spokesman Joe Incandela said the scientists had observed a new particle, but he stopped short of saying it was indeed the Higgs boson. That is the likely conclusion.

"We have quite strong evidence that there's something there. Its properties are still going to take us a little bit of time," Incandela said in a video accidentally released on Tuesday by CERN. "This is the most massive such particle that exists, if we confirm all this, which I think we will ... It's something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years, going way back to the discovery of quarks"

To make the observations, scientists at the LHC sent particles crashing at tremendous speeds to try to create Higgs. Then, because the particle only exists for a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, scientists looked for its signature decay. The scientists said they had detected what are likely Higgs trails — a bump in their data — with a great degree of certainty.

The announcement is one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in decades and could put the finishing touches on Standard Model particle physics.

So...If we can find a way to FUCK with the Higgs Boson...

That's human kind for you. When a new discovery is made the first thing we do is find ways to have sex with it.

Well, otherwise, what's the point?

Yeah, yeah, I know - discovery and knowledge about the universe, but seriously. If mass is actually caused by particle interactions...then we can, potentially, maybe someday...mess with mass.

So...If we can find a way to FUCK with the Higgs Boson...

Mass Erect?

Joking aside, awesome. Glad they finally got it to work this time, since it was going to be a sort of last-chance at experimentally confirming the existence of the Higgs. Otherwise, their required power estimates would be off by so much, that it'd require a collider of 10 times the diameter, which is... well. Absurd, given the LHC's already massive size.

I'd wager it's already a porn movie by now, with neon signs and a lot of blue paint, and concerns itself with the Higgs bosom and not the boson, but nice try.

Too bad the SSC never got built...
I do wonder though, how much would the necessary computing infrastructure have cost in the 90s? Lots, probably.

Glad they finally got it to work this time, since it was going to be a sort of last-chance at experimentally confirming the existence of the Higgs. Otherwise, their required power estimates would be off by so much, that it'd require a collider of 10 times the diameter, which is... well. Absurd, given the LHC's already massive size.

Question: If the Higgs Boson is confirmed, and is is what imparts most mass to the universe....

What would happen if we found a way to repel, or shield against them in matter? i.e

"Zap! This ship no longer has mass!"

A lot, but SSC was designed for lower luminosity and might not haven needed quite as much compute power. LHC, designed in competition against the SSC and with a smaller tunnel, went for a lower-energy/higher-luminosity design.

If we could alter coupling with the Higgs field, and thus affect the mass of fundamental particles- well, for one thing, we would probably end up messing with chemistry as the responsiveness of particles to electromagnetic forces would increase with less mass and decrease with more mass. So if we altered the coupling around a human body, it would probably end up dying and melting into a series of bizarre molecules as the very nature of electrochemical bonding was fundamentally altered. Again, not particularly useful, unless you have an even weirder set of fetishes.

So what does it mean in terms of practical use ? Mass effect fields and FTL are possible ?

So if we found a way to decouple massive particles from the Higgs field, they would instantaneously accelerate to the speed of light while maintaining the same direction of velocity. Not particularly useful unless you have a fetish for strange and unusual explosions.

So what does it mean in terms of practical use?

Mass effect fields and FTL are possible ?

How did you think that?