Sean Carroll live-blogged a seminar discussing the latest results, which meant he wrote down a heck of a lot of cryptic jargon I couldn't understand at all. But here's the bottom line:
Personal editorializing by me: we’ve found the Higgs, or at least a Higgs. Still can’t be sure that it’s just the vanilla Standard Model Higgs. The discrepancies aren’t quite strong enough to be sure that they really represent beyond-Standard-Model physics… but it’s a strong possibility.
Cool. The broad strokes of the Standard Model look OK, but there might be enough unexpected variance that some new physics will emerge from it all. It sounds like the best of all possible results from a physicist's point of view.
But really, the best part of the article was this:
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Great picture, and exciting news.
How many particles will be required to reassemble god?
Found is the operant word, I think. Something has been around for some time propagating gravity. Now we have a confidence level that the propagator has been observed under what we hope were controlled conditions.
But I agree with your sentiment. If I had a dollar for every time some yahoo/journalist/joe citizen said "God Particle" I could build another LHC.
I too think it is an unfortunate label because it is SO open to misinterpretation. The words of science are so frequently grasped by the religious as being indicative of what THEY hold as prevalent for instance, the word "belief." In science, belief is backed by evidence that anyone, hopefully, can see and understand. While I am no particle physicist, science gives me the ability to understand the underlying procedure and meaning in something even as advanced as this! This is what true education is about; using other disciplines to make a comprehensive understanding. This is what will continue the advancement of human knowledge, cooperation in real understanding because the alternative has and probably always will be squandering resources on self ingratiation.
Interesting invention, I must say as A Half Century Invention! Do you know why? read at http://wp.me/p1xs3u-4V
Well, of course they can't call it the God Particle any more.
... we have evidence it exists :P
All censorship and no debate makes Pharyngula a dull place.
I believe it's some sort of bug rather than censorship? I'm seeing recent comment links for all sorts of pages but no comments thereon. I have doubts this one will make it, for example.