What the Hay is the Higgs Boson? · 11:38pm Feb 2nd, 2014
Many years ago, I was attending a science communication lecture, in which the lecturer threw a hypothetical challenge to the class: to write an article on the Higgs Boson for the Daily Sun, the notorious, best-selling British tabloid, known for snappy headlines, a lack of political correctness, and the dubious veracity of its articles.
He wasn't serious. The idea was just to get the class thinking about how to describe the most incomprehensibly abstract bits of research in the most dumbed-down of media. And it got a good laugh. At the time the idea that a newspaper like the Sun would publish something on the Higgs was completely ludicrous. It was almost unheard of for any mainstream newspaper to publish an article on particle physics. Science journalism was basically limited to stuff about medicine, technology, wildlife, and occasionally astronomy.
But the world has changed since then, and it's testimony to the way that CERN and the LHC have caught the public imagination, that the discovery of the Higgs Boson was indeed reported by the Sun. And by just about every other newspaper worldwide. If you had told me this ten years ago, I wouldn't have believed it, any more than I would have believed that I would be writing stories about My Little Ponies studying physics, and that people would read them.
I've not yet tried anything as daring as explaining the Higgs Boson through pony fic. But other writers are braver than I am. If you haven't done so yet, do take a look at: Cheerilee explains the Higgs Boson. It's a cool quirkly little story, which pretty much does what the title says; and rather more accurately than the Daily Sun.
So how do you talk about the Higgs to an audience who haven't spent the last five years studying mathematical physics? There are various options:
1) Tell the truth. An explanation, which a researcher studying the Higgs would certify as accurate, would probably have to start with a lengthly explanation of quantum electrodynamics and gauge symmetry; then discuss the problems of producing a consistent theory to include weak interactions, and how this can be achieved with a non symmetric vacuum state... By the time you get to the conclusion on how particles can acquire mass through an interaction with the Higgs field, you will have most likely lost your audience's attention.
2) Adapt David Miller's classic explanation to your audience. Professor Miller successfully persuaded the then UK science minister to fund the LHC by explaining how particles acquire mass through the Higgs mechanism, in the same way that Margaret Thatcher moves through a room full of political party workers. This metaphor is one of the most popular explanations of the Higgs, but most versions sensibly replace the former prime minister with a celebrity figure who the author feels their readers will better relate to.
3) Dodge the question of what it actually is, and instead tell a gripping story of the development of collider physics. Including the drama of the final days of the LEP accelerator; the tragedy of the SSC; the excitement of the start up of the LHC; the early set-backs; and the final triumphant discovery. Emphasize the scale of the project and the huge international team behind it. [With a footnote that it actually doesn't work out any more expensive than a project like Heathrow Terminal 5; and the technology spin-offs are amazing – we invented the world wide web, you know?] This way by the time you reach the end of the story, the readers will be so thrilled by the tale of the epic journey and thrill of discovery, that they won't notice that you haven't actually explained what it is we discovered, and why it is so important.
4) Call it the God Particle.
Of course the Sun opted for (4). The name 'The God Particle' has infuriated people of faith, secularists and physicists in equal measure. It's a silly name as the Higgs has nothing to do with God (unless you are a member of a very strange religious cult). It was coined by Leon Lederman in a book on the subject to try to convey a sense of the fundamental importance of the Higgs to the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Trouble is once you have found the 'God Particle' how do you talk the politicians into funding another machine to find the next God Particle? Lederman apparently would have preferred to call it the goddamn particle. A competition to find an alternative name came up with The Champagne Bottle Boson, which is quite clever if you know the shape of the Higg's potential:
But it's not too surprising that it never caught on.
Also interesting that the name 'Higgs' has stuck, when it's not usual to name particles after scientists. It seems that an exception was made just because Peter Higgs has such a cool name.
And, of course, there's the boson of friendship, the Hugs.
Thing is, if you use Octonion maths, you get the same results out of 10 D GR, and E8 QM, which includes 240 particles forces, colours etc, and something like at least 4-8 different Higgs variations.
I still like the description that GR is the time like version that you see when Inside the experiment, and QM is the time Less version you see when Outside the experiment.
Fortunately, if youmake a 2D hologram by folding into two klein bottles and placing face to face, you end up with a virtual 2D membrane that can only exist in 5D space (Dont forget the doubling of dimentions for complex values in FFT to 10D), that has no outside.
Then you have Hilbert NDimentional filling curves, Douglas AdamsWhole General Sort Of Miss Mash, Pratchetts L Space, Universe As A Simulation, Conways Game Of Life Cellular Automota, and last but not least, Flufflepuff Programming Language.
Personally I prefer description 2 because it generates an effect of a particle in LQG or virtual foam, without needing particles, just distortions in mathematical, geometrical or code space.
Looking at the strange result that applying heiseburg uncertainty to FFT gives a value of 16*Pi, which is related to GR, makes me think the reason that its been so hard to get GR and QM to work together, is because of the Elephant. Theyre Orthogonal imaginary axis to each other, and parts of the same math function.
Pity about the physisits that hate imaginary numbers when he finds ut that space is the imaginary axis, and time is the real scalar. Sort of like electrons having the wrong charge becue it was a random seelcton as to which way current flowed relative to charge of the carrier.
the Sun isn't known for anything more than bad pun headlines and page 3 girls, along with the lack of political correctness