Remember the luminiferous aether that permeated all space to allow electromagnetic waves to travel through empty space? It didn't do well after the Michelson-Morley experiment yielded a negative result. It might very well be that the higgs field, which also is supposed to permeate all space to give mass to all the particles, is another failed idea. I'm not saying it is right now, but being ruled out at 95% gives it slim chances, and the world needs to prepare for that failure.
Now two possibilities I can see right now: 1) find some principles that won't allow free higgs bosons, that way you keep the idea of the field intact; 2) replace the Weinberg-Salam theory of the electroweak force by a totally different theory. Both of these options offered considerable challenge. Perhaps there are other possibilities that will come to the fore. I often hear technicolor, of which I am not familiar with, but the main obstacle is that it is not renormalizable.
Now two possibilities I can see right now: 1) find some principles that won't allow free higgs bosons, that way you keep the idea of the field intact; 2) replace the Weinberg-Salam theory of the electroweak force by a totally different theory. Both of these options offered considerable challenge. Perhaps there are other possibilities that will come to the fore. I often hear technicolor, of which I am not familiar with, but the main obstacle is that it is not renormalizable.
