Congrats Peter Higgs! It looks like you got it right in 1964.
Now this is kinda cool but wouldn’t it have cooler if CERN hadn’t found the Higg’s Boson. I might have to have re-saddled the horse. Because if the Standard Model is true then in a sense that is a bit dull, really. I mean the truth might be dull but whilst it may be true it is still dull. A failure to find the Higg’s boson would have been much more interesting.
Physics note. Particles called bosons are named for Satyendra Nath Bose and they are essentially integer spin. Politics note. Joe Stalin liked ‘em. You see Bose-Einstein statistics (unlike Fermi-Dirac statistics) allow all particles to drop to the same energy level. This is a fact of nature which has fuck-all to do with politics but fermions obey the Pauli exclusion principle because of their half-integer spin so they have to have different energy levels (it’s a little tricky to explain why - sorry very tricky to explain why - but Uncle Joe didn’t like them because they wouldn’t “collectivise”). Bosons basically are forces and fermions are matter. They make you and me. And everything else. If you have a hamster it is fermions held together by bosons. Or a cheese sandwich. Or a pair of trousers. Or anything. Even dear old Joe Stalin was made of non-collectivising fermions held together by bosons.
Yeah, but have they actually created/discovered a Higgs Boson? All I’m hearing is that they think they might have. Not the same.
I rather like the idea of fermions held together by a cheese sandwich, though.
They got a resonance at the right GeV Lynne. Now I’m not 100% sure but the betting man in me says they snagged it. It’s the fundamental cause of mass so Weight-Watchers ought to be careful or Prof Brian Cox of the University of The Stone Roses will be round (isn’t physics like brilliant our kid!). And that would be terrible - he’d want to play on his keyboard and Things can only get worse. But CERN almost certainly got it. Magnificent! You magnificent Swissulent and Frogulent bastards you! You utterly glorious cunts! You just know I want a multi-billion quid proton-accelerator in my living room. Wouldn’t fit but I guess we could extend…
Right now, if the discovery is useful and vital, there’s some bureaucrat in Whitehall working on a way to slap a tax on it…
Here’s a question only Nick could answer:
If the Higgs Boson gives mass to matter, what’s (in) a singularity (black hole)?
Or are they one & the same thing?