Putting my toe into the waters (at the VERY VERY SHALLOW END) of particle physics, I read and posted a bit about the search for the Higgs boson particle, which is believed to bestow mass on all the other little particles.
Well, our friends at Cosmic Variance have a handy dandy update and you don’t really have to know much about the subject to follow the post. Jolly good of them.
Exactly, that’s what I kept telling them! But no, they had to go ahead with building their superexpensive supercolliders…
Seriously, it is interesting stuff, even if my eyes started glazing over at that equation (I did find the missing parenthesis). His mention of Sheldon Glashow reminded me that I have an unfinished book by him sitting in a box. Tried reading it in seventh grade which may be a very good reason I wasn’t able to get through it.
Life could get very interesting if what John mentioned about a new era comes to pass (a “Higgsian revolution” to compare with the quantum and electromagnetic revolutions). Who knows, maybe it means they can develop a weight-loss pill that actually works.
Heh – you know how scientists are, always have to learn the hard way.