shipperx | "God Particle" found... Stephen Hawking Loses $100

I found a fairly good explanation of what it is that's somewhat comprehensible for a layman like myself:

What is the Higgs boson, and why is it so important?
One of the long-standing mysteries in physics is the origin of mass.

While most people tend to think of mass in terms of gravity, it is actually independent of gravity (in zero gravity conditions, it is still harder to push Rush Limbaugh, who has a large mass, than a ping-pong ball, which has a small mass). (...) All of the known elementary particles have masses, ranging from fractions of an electron volt for neutrinos up to around a hundred billion electron volts for the heaviest quark. ( The values of all of the masses are found at http://www.cpepweb.org/... ).

Nobody knows why the masses have the values they do. One could just say "well, that's the way things are". But there is a problem---without a Higgs boson, the mathematics of the Standard Model would predict that the masses of the fundamental elementary particles are zero.
So what is the Higgs?

Physicists assume that everywhere in space there is a field called a "Higgs field". On Earth, we all know that everywhere in space there is something called a "magnetic field". The Higgs field is similar, but it has no preferred direction and is constant everywhere in the Universe. When particles move through the Higgs field, they interact with it and the main effect of this interaction is to give these particles a mass.

All particle masses arise from the particle's interaction with the Higgs field, and heavy particles interact more strongly with the field than light particles do. Let me use an analogy to explain this further.

Same theoretical physicist elaborated on this prior to the announced finding:

Prior to 1971, it was known that there are three forces in Nature (besides gravity, which I won't discuss here): the electromagnetic force, the weak force (which is responsible for a type of radioactive decay and all interactions involving neutrinos), and the strong force (which holds protons and neutrons together in a nucleus). (...) in 1973-1974, a new theory of the strong interactions (called QCD) was developed, and it was so simple and beautiful that it was accepted immediately, and was also tested over the next few years and shown to be correct. Together, these theories constitute what is called "The Standard Model".

A nice chart showing all of the particles and interactions of the Standard Model can be found at http://www.cpepweb.org/...

(...) Over the past 35 years, the Standard Model has been experimentally tested to great precision, with many dozens of predictions now verified. It is an extraordinary achievement. But there is one missing piece, and it is the strangest and most uncertain aspect of the entire Standard Model, and that is the Higgs boson.

(...) So what is the Higgs? Physicists assume that everywhere in space there is a field called a "Higgs field". On Earth, we all know that everywhere in space there is something called a "magnetic field". The Higgs field is similar, but it has no preferred direction and is constant everywhere in the Universe. When particles move through the Higgs field, they interact with it and the main effect of this interaction is to give these particles a mass.

One can think of this situation as being like a person walking through a swimming pool filled with water. As the person walks in the pool, the water makes it harder to move---it makes them feel heavier than they would on dry land. With a real swimming pool, of course, you can climb out and walk normally. But the Higgs field is everywhere in the Universe, and particles can't "escape". All particle masses arise from the particle's interaction with the Higgs field...