Just a quick note for those of you who're interested in the Higgs Boson.

I misunderstood some bits and can clarify one thing.

The Higgs boson is not responsible for imparting mass to things which are massive. (protons, electrons, etc.)

The Higgs boson is evidence of the Higgs field, which imparts mass to massive objects through the Higgs mechanism.

The observation of the Higgs boson is as close as we can get to actually observing the Higgs field. In fact, we can only observe the photons left over after a Higgs boson decays. So everything about the Higgs mechanism is completely unobservable in any direct sense. We have observed the photons from the decay of many Higgs bosons, though... which is evidence of the underlying mechanism.

This is one of those cases where the fact that theory preceded observation is the compelling case for the theory being the appropriate description.