The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is an immense piece of very complex, cutting edge technology. For those of us who are interested in science (but not necessarily initiates) this huge tools is something we have all wondered about (as with CERN, Fermilab, and a host of others). Thus, it seems that there is a corresponding science press who (it seems to me) act more like the tabloid press than as members of the sciences (OK, this has always been a problematic assumption…).
In any case, the front page news about the potential find of the Higgs Boson, and the measured responses from the science community are a great example of how distant the majority of us (i.e. the people on the street) are from science research.
Even the notion of the scientific methods seems to be a quaint curiosity, even to the reporters who covered this virtual event.
Of course, this begs the question as to whether we (as a society) have ever been attuned to the sciences. Other than the 19th and 20th centuries (and even now, for that matter…) being a time where the powers that be have increasingly acquiesced to the value and growth of technology and the sciences, most of history is replete with examples of how the sciences have never been part of cultures…maybe some innovative engineering practices, or some inventions, but the search to understand (rigorously) which seemingly only a small cadre of people ever do.
To any readers with a science or engineering background, I understand most of the arguments you may bring to bear to this general assertion. All I am trying o say is that most people have little or no understanding of technology, the sciences, or even the intellectual methods used in these efforts. This is nothing new, even though most of the underpinnings of our society are supported by increasing amounts of more and more complex technology…
Here’s to hoping that more and more people will take the time and effort to actually try to understand what the Higgs Boson may be…
Overexcited Rumors of LHC Higgs Boson Discovery
http://news.discovery.com/space/rumored-rumors-of-lhc-higgs-boson-discovery-110424.html
Rumors, a leaked memo, and the most powerful particle accelerator in the world? No, it’s not another Wikileak exposé (or the subject of the next Dan Brown novel); it’s premature excitement about the potential discovery of the most elusive particle in the quantum physics world.
Déjà vu? Yes, especially since last year’s Tevatron rumor about the discovery of a "light" Higgs particle and other miscellaneous murmurings of potential Higgs signals in recent months.
"What’s happened here is a bunch of people have spent four nights without sleep and they’ve made some plots and got rather overexcited," Butterworth said. "[The researchers have] sent an internal note around the [ATLAS] collaboration — which is fine, everyone’s excited there — but unfortunately it’s leaked out."
"If we got this excited about every single thing, no one would get any sleep."
Other scientists have been quick to say that putting any credibility on leaked documents is flawed. In an interview for Live Science, physicist Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University said, "It is actually quite illegitimate and unscientific to talk publicly about internal collaboration material before it is approved. So this ‘result’ is not a result until the collaboration officially releases it."
Spokeswoman quashes Higgs particle rumor – April 25, 2011
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2011/04/spokesman_quashes_god_particle.html
Higgs boson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. The existence of the particle is postulated as a means of resolving inconsistencies in current theoretical physics, and attempts are being made to confirm the existence of the particle by experimentation, using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the Tevatron at Fermilab.
The Higgs boson is the only Standard Model particle that has not been observed in particle physics experiments. It is a consequence of the so-called Higgs mechanism which is the part of the Standard Model that explains how most of the known elementary particles become massive. For example, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon, which mediates electromagnetism, and the massive W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force. If the Higgs boson exists, it is an integral and pervasive component of the material world.
"The God particle"
The Higgs boson is often referred to as "the God particle" by the media, after the title of Leon Lederman’s book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? While use of this term may have contributed to increased media interest in particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider many scientists dislike it, since it overstates the particle’s importance, not least since its discovery would still leave unanswered questions about the unification of QCD, the Electroweak interaction and gravity, and the ultimate origin of the universe. In a renaming competition, a jury of physicists chose the name "the champagne bottle boson" as the best popular name.
