This article confirms the "God- damn" reference... http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jun/30/higgs.boson.cern On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Ian Glenn <root.ibg@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not sure it's true of course, but I've read and heard several times that the origin of the term "God Particle" was a researcher calling it "that God-damn particle" because it was so difficult to isolate, and the tongue in cheek name caught on. Realizing they shouldn't say "God-damn" to the media led to simply "God particle" and the media and public got excited by the mystical sounding nature of the name, and implied "fundamental-ness" as you seem to be saying isn't really justified in the second part of your second paragraph.
What a shame for science communication, but there's no rule saying that a country that can economically support great science will necessarily have a large part of the population that wants to understand it, let alone have a population that is okay hearing the words "God damn" flippantly from time to time. (I know the LHC is the EU's project, but we support great science here too.)
Thanks for your email, I'm going to have a look at that paper now.
Ian
On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 11:12 PM, Dave Gary <davegary@me.com> wrote:
I’m a bit confused.
First, in my understanding of the Standard Model the Higgs field is responsible for the masses of intermediate vector bosons (W-, W+, and Z0), quarks and leptons. That’s about it. The Higgs field does not even explain the origin of the Higgs boson’s own mass.
Second, when I was younger I read the 27 September 1905 paper by Einstein entitled, “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend On Its Energy Content?” That’s where m = E / c2 was, initially, formulated. Matter that we interact with on a regular basis is composed of nucleons and it is the energy of interaction between the constituent parts of these nucleons, not the mass of the parts themselves (which is very small), that is responsible for most baryonic mass. The Higgs field and associated boson has nothing to do with this. The Higgs boson is not a “God particle” and is not responsible for “most” mass. I don’t know where this came from? I guess physicists have to eat, too. These days you don’t get the big money if you don’t have some fluff around the edges.
Third, as amateur astronomers, all of us have heard of dark matter. We’ve never observed it directly, only by its gravitational interactions. Obviously, if we can’t see it with any of our devices it has a very weak coupling to photons and is, therefore, likely to be non-baryonic. That means dark matter is very unlikely to couple to the Higgs field. As it stands now, dark matter represents a significant proportion of the mass in our Universe.
Shouldn’t I be confused?
Don’t get me wrong, discovering the Higgs particle is a great achievement. I think it’s just been a little over-hyped.
Dave _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club.
To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".
_______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
Send messages to the list to Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com
The Utah-Astronomy mailing list is not affiliated with any astronomy club.
To unsubscribe go to: http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Then enter your email address in the space provided and click on "Unsubscribe or edit options".
-- Chrismo I fix things, all kinds of things... (801) 897-9075