This discovery has huge implications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/science/cern-physicists-may-have-discovered-higgs-boson-particle.html?pagewanted=all

Gravity, electromagnetism, relativity... Absolutely nothing about the way the universe operates changed after these things were discovered by human beings. This discovery is no different.

We could tell based on the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn that there must be another planet noone had seen yet, and with the advent of adequate telescopes we discovered Uranus and Neptune. Relativity made black holes a mathematical possibility, and once we discovered what to look for, we found that the universe is populated with black holes. We broke apart atoms to discover what they were made of and postulated that there must be something responsible for giving all these particles mass, and with a sensitive enough detector, we've finally confirmed the existence of a here-to-fore purely theoretical subatomic particle.

Sometimes sculptors claim not to create their masterpieces but merely to free what was already locked inside the wood or stone, or whatever their medium may be. That's what has happened. We looked into the atom and saw the Higgs there, then began chipping away until it was free.

For all our advances, we are still children wandering in a world we barely understand

Apparently, the implications of this discovery aren't fully understood here. This takes us to before the moment of creation. It will tell us how and why the Big Bang happened.

They spent billions of dollars on that machine, so of course they will want to claim that they have found what they are looking for.

They would have been just as happy to find something different or
nothing at all. In fact, it would have been more interesting in
some ways.

It is hardly the "God Particle" though. It is just part of the
standard model which has been used as the working model for like
50 years already. So in a sense finding the Higgs is kind of
anticlimactic.

What is interesting is that this discovery means that this standard
model is really part of the way the world works and so we will have
to look for new theories which reduce to the standard model under
appropriate conditions. That has mostly been assumed however for
at least 40 years.

They spent billions of dollars looking for a better bang and found little.

Yet found a small big thing by looking at data which showed it had been there all along.

Interesting what can happen when you look the right direction.

Oh I am sure there is something even smaller then what they found floating around laughing at us. It is screaming "You haven't found me yet!" heh heh

JB is right, that's all they wanted to find... they never even looked in another direction.....

This is an infinite universe. I doubt if they will ever find the smallest particle. Like fractals, perhaps everything just gets infinitely smaller and smaller -- for infinity.