A particle not unlike the Higgs boson was discovered to rapturous applause. No really, a room full of people applauded like it was a sports game. It was brilliant. One guy said “I was overwhelmed by the data analysis” and started choking up a bit. We were two seconds away from someone chucking their panties at the boson and then fainting.Having read some serious nonsense about this discovery lately, I was happy to find a list of links of respectable attempts to explain the business to those of us who lack any kind of a clue about particle physics, in addition to some second-generation links from associated comments. I can't honestly say any of these were tremendously helpful to me (the subject remains over my head), except that they seemed less silly than what the newspapers were running.
An Atlantic piece featuring a mini-lecture received at a July 4th picnic.
How the Higgs field is like water that fills up some particles and is expelled by others.
A short video lecture from The Guardian, a publication that's producing better-than-average written articles as well.
I like this animation of a brief explanation of what the experiments are trying to measure and how.
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