  The particle recently discovered at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva is
almost certainly a Higgs boson, the long-sought completion of the Standard
Model of particle physics. But this discovery, an achievement by more than six
thousand scientists (including students), is actually much more than a mere
capstone of the Standard Model. It instead represents a bridge from the
Standard Model to exciting discoveries of the future, at higher energies or in
other experiments, and to the properties of matter at very low temperatures.
The mere existence of a particle with zero spin implies a need for new physics,
with the most likely candidate being supersymmetry, which requires that every
known particle has a superpartner yet to be discovered. And phenomena similar
to the Higgs are seen in superconducting metals and superfluid gases at low
temperatures, which extend down to a millionth or even a billionth of a degree
Kelvin. So the discovery of a Higgs boson has a central place in our attempts
both to achieve a true understanding of Nature and to harness Nature in
practical applications.
