[flatline]

It would be no harm to the bureaucracy if they did not find the Higgs. The scientific community would have reacted with excitement and the search for the hole in the standard model would have been apace. In many ways this would have been better for particle physics funding. The standard model is now complete, and we still don’t have a unified field theory. I’m not a physicist but have been following this search through popular writing since I was a kid. Is there now any reason to build a bigger supercollider, and/or is there a risk of the entire field stagnating till someone comes along with a testable theory?

[nick3443]

Any favorite resources for a fellow science-interested laymen interested in getting to your understanding level?

[flatline]

Off the top of my head, Hawking’s books talk a lot about the GUT and are still relevant, Greene’s book on string theory is an advancement of conceptual attempts to find one. It’s harder to point to now because so much of the public discourse since the mid-2000s has moved online.