'The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"'

– https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/

And, although the Standard Model may not be written in stone, the compact description certainly is: https://home.cern/cern-people/updates/2013/03/standard-model-set-stone

Indeed! See another Quantum Diaries post on it: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/06/26/cern-mug-summarizes-standard-model-but-is-off-by-a-factor-of-2/

But you'll have to talk with John Ellis) about that: http://cds.cern.ch/record/1071200?ln=en

OH MY GOD YES! <3

The term "decay" when applied to non-macro phenomena is terribly misleading for anyone who isn't a physicist.

"Decay" has several meanings (see the Wikipedia page), but it would not be foolish to assume that the term is commonly associated with things like decomposition or biological decays. Even in physics, an orbital decay is a gradual process.

"Transformation" is much more applicable, and is a term I've used myself over the last few years instead of "decay" in this context.

Look at "Four-vectors": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-vector

"Let’s draw Feynman diagrams!" and more, on the Quantum Diaries blog: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2010/02/14/lets-draw-feynman-diagams/

EDIT: This is already referenced in the article, but I'll leave this link up as a pointer anyway.

Here's a beautiful (if long) explanation of QFT, on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-field-theory/

• ATLAS paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.020
• CMS paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.021
• CERN's background pages on the Higgs boson: https://home.cern/topics/higgs-boson

Or is it that all particles that interact with the BEH field have mass? ;)

Typically, though, the matter particles (fermions) are grouped into two, depending on whether they interact with the colour charge (quarks) or not (leptons, which include both the electrically charged leptons and neutrinos).

However, the division into three groups, as shown here, is helpful!