Higgs Boson: A Ghost in the Machine - TIME

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1729139,00.html

Working from Higgs' theory, scientists postulate that initially weightless particles move through a ubiquitous quantum field, known as a Higgs field, like a pearl necklace through a jar of honey. Some particles, such as photons — weightless carriers of light — can cut through the sticky Higgs field without picking up mass. Others get bogged down and become heavy; that is the process that creates tangible matter. "The Higgs gives everything in the universe its mass," says David Francis, a physicist on the ATLAS experiment. Pointing at CERN's grand geological amphitheater of the Jura and the Alps. "None of that is possible without the Higgs."