Seriously, stop calling it the "God Particle"

[chuketek]

why don't you try accelerating U-235 atoms? I'm sure if those babies hit they'd make for some interesting results.

Failing this, couldn't you get 2 sets of atoms going at once, and then have 2 collisions in close proximity to each other, so the remains of one collision are hit by a second. the up and down could be hit by the top and bottom and be split further.

What makes you think we don't accelerate heavy ions? although U235 might be pushing things a bit we do spend a month or so per year using lead ions. No good for Higgs searches but very useful for Quark-Gluon plasma research.
Also, for a variety of reasons, I'm afraid the second idea wouldn't work (although I guess it's mostly a joke?). We already squeeze the beam to a few micrometers for the collisions and to get collisions "in close proximity" the timing would need to be closer than the already nanosecond-order time the particle bunch spends colliding. Plus you can't *split* up and down at the energies this would involve (if indeed they can be split at all).

 

[UberNoodle]

Because whenever a religion person hears the word 'god', they naturally assume that it means what they define 'god' to mean.

 

[UberNoodle]

Never heard it called that - but I see what you're saying.

I think that the term 'God particle' is a bit self-conflicting, mixing religious and scientific terminology together.

That's like calling gravity the 'Christ force'

Christ Force is awesome!

 

[Slenn]

Dude. The fact that you work at CERN makes this physics major all the more jealous of you.

I could never understand the "god particle" thing. The H-Boson may explain a lot of stuff and lead us to the unified field theory, but even that is not the end result of physics. And it may take thousands of years before we get a solid U-theory.

 

[UberNoodle]

I work on the ATLAS project at the LHC

course you do.

Yeah, I guess the people who work there don't know how to use the Internet. They don't have lives and go home of a night, play games or anything like that.

 

[chuketek]

3. The penultimate sentence implies that you are a bit peeved by the notion of scientists having to "explain themselves", but isn't that kind of the point? Scientists have, for practically the entire span of history, had to explain themselves to people who didn't understand, or didn't want to understand. It absolutely comes with the territory. Dr. Feynman, who was mentioned earlier, was probably one of the best in the business at explaining modern physics to the layman.

I wouldn't mind that at all. Explaining things, as I did with the guy on the bus, is no problem.
I was trying to imply that whilst this person obviously believes very differently to me, he was extremely civilized about it and seemed interested in the replies. Not everyone is so reasonable when they feel something at the core of how they view their identity is being threatened.
I'm not saying it'll start physical violence, but it certainly breeds an atmosphere of conflict which needn't exist.

 

[HotFezz8]

I work on the ATLAS project at the LHC

course you do.

Yeah, I guess the people who work there don't know how to use the Internet. They don't have lives and go home of a night, play games or anything like that.

i severely doubt they go onto the escapist.

in all seriousness; i do not, and will never, believe the author of this thread. it strikes me as infinitely more likely to be some 14 year old sat at home who has access to some very good text books.

 

[kouriichi]

I never called it the "God Particle".

I call it the "Nathan Fillion Particle".

 

[ninjajoeman]

Oh I thought it was the best particle system ever developed.

 

[M920CAIN]

I've never heard of Higgs Boson or God Particle. Does this make me an ignorant?

 

[somonels]

Science always hypes up things that end up being huge duds.
You need an example? The human genome, was prophesied to be the be-all end-all cure for every disease ever. Remember nucluar power? Clean and free energy for all.

 

[Kurt Horsting]

But if the Higgs Boson it isn't the god particle, then how can we have mass?


Ok, that was a terrible joke.

 

[TheEnglishman]

Yeah, I think the whole religion thing and the argument that "Your going where man isn't supposed to go! God's Domain!" isn't very valid in most cases, especially with the Higs Boson, providing you don't cause a black hole that will consume the world I'm fine, it'll just probably take me a little while to comprehend what you've done.

 

[Tentickles]

Next time start talking about the "Stupid Particle" that seems to follow you around when the layman tries to start a conversation with you that is clearly beyond their grasp.

 

[StBishop]

You'll probably be happy to hear that I've literally NEVER heard it referred to as the "God Particle". Always the Higgs Boson.

But I'm sure you realize how impossible it will be to get everyone to stop calling it that without some form of official statement. A colloquialism like that is hard to weed out.

This. And I'm an undergrad who's only brush with physics so far has been Newton's Laws, friction and collisions, trajectories, Bernoulli's Principal etc. Really broad strokes stuff.

So yeah, lucky us I suppose.

 

[dyre]

Frankly, i would not bother with reading religous texts unless your interested in finding outdated moral standards or actually are looking for God.

"Its not important.

I think you misunderstand, I wouldn't read the bible to try and understand philosophy, morals or the natural world. I'd read it to try and understand Christians.
edit: I don't mean this offensively, "Christians are incomprehensible" or anything like that. I simply mean that there are a lot of Christians, the Christian faith as a whole has had a massive impact on world history and by definition they do believe in some aspects of the book, either literally or figuratively. This is why I say it's important.

ehh, I dont think reading it would give you much understanding of them since catholics arnt even allowed to read the bible and protestants all have their own interpretation of it, hell there is some offshoot of protestantism that thinks jesus wanted the best people to get as much money as possible

shows what you know about Christianity, lol. Catholics aren't allowed to read the Bible? Not since the Middle Ages, dude. And Protestantism is generally even more interested in the Bible, whereas Catholics are sometimes stuck in a lot of tradition.

no, the only official source of the bible for catholics are the priests
protestants are more interested in the bible but they also interpret the crap out of it to really support anything they want

nah, that's incorrect. It's true that the Church wants to guide Catholics in interpreting the Bible, but it also encourages Catholics to read it too. Though, I don't blame you for thinking Catholics don't read the Bible, since for a long time they couldn't do it, and Catholics today read it less than Protestants do.

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0402fea3.asp

As for Protestants interpreting the Bible, well yeah, the Bible happens to be easily interpreted into lots of different messages...anyways, it sure beats the Catholics and their "support the Vatican's view forever" beliefs...

 

[Jegsimmons]

didn't even know what the higgs boson thing was till now (never cared) but now i know what to call it, the god particle.
mostly just out of shear spite....and i think it sounds better.

 

[Mordwyl]

But... Higgs Boson sounds so much cooler.