Anyone here enough of a geek to explain significance of the Higgs Boson particle?

[kiwiMark]

it proves they're recklessly trying to destroy our universe and MUST BE STOPPE!!111

[MadMojoMonkey]

it proves they're recklessly trying to destroy our universe and MUST BE STOPPE!!111

Experiments at MUCH, MUCH higher energies happen regularly, but they are not caused and controlled (in the experimental sense) by humans.

The sun constantly spits out some extremely high energy particles. Sometimes they can be captured with an appropriate sensor array by chance. This is really fun science, but hard to know when and where you should put your sensors, so relatively low yield on the data side.

The idea of making a huge particle accelerator is that humans can control when and where the experimental event takes place, and make sure they have amazing sensors there. Unfortunately, we don't have the ability to produce energies even remotely close to those which exist in a stellar core.

So, simultaneously, the LHC at CERN is the highest energy experiment ever created by humans, and really a shockingly low energy device considering some of the data available.

My point is that it's nowhere near a "world ending" device, much less a "universe ending" device. Also, the use of the word reckless was, I believe, a bit hyperbolic. Just cause the whole thing got shut down for a few months when someone left a doughnut where they shouldn't have doesn't mean the whole project is reckless.