I dont really understand the higgs thing. We didnt know where particles got their mass from, then we discover a higgs particle and now particles get their mass from the higgs... where does the higgs get its mass from?
There is more to it than you or I will ever get our arms around, lol, but here is a start that may be more than you want to know, but yet it is only a tiny sample of the material out there for you to contemplate. http://www.livescience.com/27893-higgs-boson-implications.html http://www.wired.com/2014/08/multiverse/ If you go with supersymmetry, then the Higgs is just the start of our understanding of a universe that will probably end before intelligent life forms understand it; but we should have billions and billions of years to work on it before the heat death of the universe or the Big Rip. If you decide to give up on supersymmetry before the heat death of the universe ends any chance of life continuing, and decide to contemplate a universe that will not self destruct, maybe you will come up with a theory that doesn't have such dire predictions. Maybe supersymmetry is still a long shot at this stage, and if so, maybe we don't have to give up on the idea that the universe is infinte and eternal, and will always support life.
As far as we know, particles don't get their masses from the Higgs, but its existence is necessary in order for the Standard Model to include a description of those masses without breaking the theory's underlying mathematical postulates, and the strength of the Higgs interaction with other particles is proportional to said masses. The significance of mass is that it determines the inertia with which a particle resists accelerations, or more precisely in quantum mechanics, it affects the probabilities for a particle with a given momentum to propagate from one point to another in a given time, significantly reducing the probabilities of propagation to long ranges. You could have two massless photons colliding in principle to produce electrons and positrons (and practically any other particles) which do have mass, so mass isn't a conserved quantity in modern physics, but the net energy of the system on the whole is still conserved. Regarding Supersymmetry, to my understanding it's basically just an upgraded version of the Standard Model based on a more sophisticated SU(5) gauge symmetry, and it doesn't change any of the fundamental results that apply to Quantum Field Theories in general, including their implications for thermodynamics and the constant evolution of our universe towards a stable state of maximal entropy (heat death). Nor does Supersymmetry in itself provide any fundamental insights into the nature of quantum gravity, as it's only intended to apply in situations where gravity can be safely neglected or else approximated by a simple energy potential.
I liked CptBork's post 4, despite not being sure it is 100% correct, due to parts being above my pay grade. I have an old fashon POV about mass: Mass is a fundamental property of matter, exactly like charge is a fundmental property of electrons, protons, and some other particles, all of which have mass.
Mass is resistance to change-in-motion. If you trap an E=hf photon in a gedanken mirror-box, the mass if that system is increased. The mass of a body is a measure of its energy-content. The box is harder to move when the photon is inside it. When you open the box, it's a radiating body that loses mass. See Einstein's E=mc² paper, and http://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06478 where the 't Hooft is not the Nobel 't Hooft. Note that inside the box the photon is still moving at c, but it's going round and round inside the box, so it isn't getting anywhere. So it's effectively at rest. Also note that photon momentum is resistance to change-in-motion for a wave propagating linearly at c. If the wave is going round and round at c, we don't call the resistance to change-in-motion "momentum" any more. We call it mass.
