No, finding the Higgs boson doesn't mean the end of physics. But as of today, no atoms will be smashed at the LHC (the Large Hadron Collider at CERN) for approximately two years. During that time, every piece of hardware around the accelerator's full circumference will get some attention, as will the detectors that track collisions.

The LHC was designed to collide protons with a total energy of 14TeV (Tera-electron Volts), but a catastrophic failure early in its history revealed some of the superconducting connectors within the hardware wasn't up to the task. As a result, the LHC hasn't run collisions at energies above 8TeV. Each of these connectors, which link segments of the pipe that the beam travels within, will be replaced over the next two years. While the machine is shut down, the detectors used to track particles will receive maintenance and upgrades.

We're at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science this week, and there will be updates on the properties of the Higgs, as well as the search for dark matter particles. Hopefully we'll hear more about the work that went on during the physics runs of the past several years.