Archive for March 9th, 2009

A neutrino basically has no or very little charge, mass, or interaction with matter. They’re nearly impossible to ‘detect’ since they are basically nothing, but can theoretically be detected by scientists with large vats of salt water buried in chambers of metal under the earth.

A Higgs boson is a massive particle that is a fundamental part of the standard model of particle physics. Unfortunately the Higgs boson has never been observed. According to Wikipedia which has all things factual, “Experimental detection of the Higgs boson would help explain how massless elementary particles can have mass.”  Which of course, quite simply, makes not a damned bit of sense. The Large Hadron Collider, which was built in Switzerland for the low price of nearly ten billion dollars, will be used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson (or produce tiny black holes, destroying the earth). If the LHC fails to produce Higgs boson, I’m sure the world won’t end, we’ll simply have to rely on the Higgsless model. I’m not sure what the Higgsless model is, but I’m in favor of it.

My vote is that we stop giving quantum physicists billion dollar laboratories until they can invent something useful, like a toaster. It’s practical, sturdy, and useful, while seeming to work like magic (you push the lever down, the bread “disappears” then comes back a crisp golden brown). I’m all for the advance of theoretical sciences, but several billion dollars to detect something that may or may not be there, and if it is proves that massless particles aren’t massless… Well… I’m out of my real of expertise here. But that is what I expect from quantum physics, a large hadron toaster…. What’s a hadron? Oh.. I wish I could invent words too.

Comic from the clever Zach Weiner at smbc-comics.com