WHY IS IT THAT WE HAVE MASS - UNCERTAINTIES OF PHYSICS

while i usually don't pay much attention to the science news , i came across a fascinating article in today's "globe and mail" :

...A GLEAM IN GOD'S EYE...
(from the above link)
Next year, Canada will take part in a $9.5-billion international project to find the Higgs boson, the 'God particle' that physicists theorize gives mass to matter. As MATTHEW HART writes, their exciting search brings up essential questions about faith, the universe and existence .

if it were not for a subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, the sleigh full of presents and fat old Mr. Claus himself would not weigh anything at all. They would be matter without mass and, instead of landing on your roof, might easily just float away into the Christmas sky, spreading dismay among children everywhere and sending a generation of scientists back to the drawing board.

The question of why it is that we have mass is one of the uncertainties of contemporary physics, and a series of breathtaking experiments planned for the new year, when physicists will create conditions that existed one-thousandth of a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, is expected to reveal the tiny particle that accounts for mass. Or not.

The Higgs boson is theoretical: It has never been observed. It was proposed in the 1960s by Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh to account for mass. It works (if it exists) by setting up a field that permeates space and affects the other particles of matter, resisting their free passage; this resistance effectively gives them mass. It is the only subatomic constituent of what is called the Standard Model of particle physics that has remained invisible, and scientists would dearly love to know if it is really there.

here is the link to the
...CERN ACCELARATOR... website .

this is a massive project bringing together 7,000 (!) scientists from 54 countries around the world .
the cost of the huge apparatus alone is $ 9.5 billions .

fascinating !
hbg