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timpeltjeWonderful news from the world of physics today. It turns out that CERN scientists may have found something that resembles the Higgs Boson particle they were looking for.
I'm not being modest when I say that I can take some, if not most, of the credit for this discovery.
'Why?' you ask.
Well, simple really: last year, I spoke the following prophetic words,
'Somebody should find that thing!'
And less than a year later, my vision came to life. Today was an emotional day, you can imagine.
But how to explain Higgs and his Boson to the layman, i.e. You? After all, we don't all carry triple PhDs in Physics like yours truly (I bought mine online after a strenuous 12 minute oral exam on star signs; best €50.000 I ever spent).
As I am now also trained to be a teacher, I will provide you with two explanations, each suited to a different audience of mine...
1) Higgs Boson for animal lovers:
OK, so imagine that all the particles in the universe are hippopotami. When the universe was created, all hippopotami were blown into space, drifting further and further apart. But of course hippopotami must eat. That is why they stay in their field, the Higgs Boson field, that drags them towards it with promises of fresh & tasty puppies (or whatever hippopotami eat), creating a sort of drag on their expansion. Because hippopotami are so ravenous whenever they see a puppy, no physicist has ever been able to actually observe one. That is why the laboratory at CERN has been firing the hippopotami at each other at almost the speed of light (which confuses the hippopotami's biological clock, causing them to not devour their puppies as fast as they usually do). Now when these hippopotami collide with each other, it is obvious that it is a messy affair. Because of the speed, Higgs Boson gets confused and reveals one of his tasty little puppies, for just a split second, before the puppy is split in two and becomes an unrecognisable purée of organs and puppy juices. So what the scientists now did, was observe the puppy, right before it got mangled.
2) Higgs Boson for lovers of JG Ballard's ground-breaking novel (and rather mediocre film adaptation) Crash:
Imagine the Large Hadron collider as the ultimate destruction derby tournament. If you've read the book, or the Wikipedia summary (make an effort, will you? The book is short!), you'll know that it is about people getting off on crashing cars. So in this scenario, it would make a lot of sense to replace the particles with big Volvos driven by naked Brazilian car crash lovers. What do we know about naked Brazilian car crash lovers?
1) They most likely have herpes;
2) They speak Portuguese, unless they are native rainforest people, in which case they shouldn't be driving that car anyway;
3) They climax when their cars crash.
Point 3) is what interest us physicists in this case, because the event of a climax of one of these Brazilian race car drivers has never been witnessed by the naked eye. This meant that we built this huge billion euro tunnel to investigate whether or not Brazilians could actually climax at all. The answer, as it turns out, is: "Yes, but only very briefly and inobservable to the naked eye."
To conclude, I wish to thank CERN for believing in me and not giving up on what I told them to do. I will gladly continue taking credit for any new discovery they might find. Next time, they should invite me to their after party, however (I hear those physicists have the best orgies!).
And now I boldly go... um.... where... um... whatever, I don't like Star Trek anyway...
I'm not being modest when I say that I can take some, if not most, of the credit for this discovery.
'Why?' you ask.
Well, simple really: last year, I spoke the following prophetic words,
'Somebody should find that thing!'
And less than a year later, my vision came to life. Today was an emotional day, you can imagine.
But how to explain Higgs and his Boson to the layman, i.e. You? After all, we don't all carry triple PhDs in Physics like yours truly (I bought mine online after a strenuous 12 minute oral exam on star signs; best €50.000 I ever spent).
As I am now also trained to be a teacher, I will provide you with two explanations, each suited to a different audience of mine...
1) Higgs Boson for animal lovers:
OK, so imagine that all the particles in the universe are hippopotami. When the universe was created, all hippopotami were blown into space, drifting further and further apart. But of course hippopotami must eat. That is why they stay in their field, the Higgs Boson field, that drags them towards it with promises of fresh & tasty puppies (or whatever hippopotami eat), creating a sort of drag on their expansion. Because hippopotami are so ravenous whenever they see a puppy, no physicist has ever been able to actually observe one. That is why the laboratory at CERN has been firing the hippopotami at each other at almost the speed of light (which confuses the hippopotami's biological clock, causing them to not devour their puppies as fast as they usually do). Now when these hippopotami collide with each other, it is obvious that it is a messy affair. Because of the speed, Higgs Boson gets confused and reveals one of his tasty little puppies, for just a split second, before the puppy is split in two and becomes an unrecognisable purée of organs and puppy juices. So what the scientists now did, was observe the puppy, right before it got mangled.
2) Higgs Boson for lovers of JG Ballard's ground-breaking novel (and rather mediocre film adaptation) Crash:
Imagine the Large Hadron collider as the ultimate destruction derby tournament. If you've read the book, or the Wikipedia summary (make an effort, will you? The book is short!), you'll know that it is about people getting off on crashing cars. So in this scenario, it would make a lot of sense to replace the particles with big Volvos driven by naked Brazilian car crash lovers. What do we know about naked Brazilian car crash lovers?
1) They most likely have herpes;
2) They speak Portuguese, unless they are native rainforest people, in which case they shouldn't be driving that car anyway;
3) They climax when their cars crash.
Point 3) is what interest us physicists in this case, because the event of a climax of one of these Brazilian race car drivers has never been witnessed by the naked eye. This meant that we built this huge billion euro tunnel to investigate whether or not Brazilians could actually climax at all. The answer, as it turns out, is: "Yes, but only very briefly and inobservable to the naked eye."
To conclude, I wish to thank CERN for believing in me and not giving up on what I told them to do. I will gladly continue taking credit for any new discovery they might find. Next time, they should invite me to their after party, however (I hear those physicists have the best orgies!).
And now I boldly go... um.... where... um... whatever, I don't like Star Trek anyway...
