The Higgs Boson: Now for a down-to-earth inquiry

AS WE ALL -  at least  some of us - awaited the official word on the discovery of the so-called God particle,  the long pursuit of the universe's missing link reminded us that science never gives up on adding one more clue in defining what we and the mysterious universe might be all about.  I'm hardly qualified as a layman to go beyond  the surface of the reports that the $10 billion  experiment by countless scientists aided by the highest tech available are  99.99 pct. sure of the presence of the  Higgs boson - the other name for the elusive particle that is said to be the first expression of spatial birth.

Some will say, why bother when there is so much need on the tiny particle called earth?  Yet that has never been the case with serious  human inquiry.  Galileo would know better than I how to answer that.  Or the Curies or Edisons.   Still, they should now explain a recent Kaiser public opinion poll that told us how much farther we have to go to overcome the indifference of so many people to things they ought to know without  the aid of supercolliders and commitment to scientific inquiry.  The survey flat out reported that 41 pct. of  those surveyed weren't even aware that the U.S. Supreme Court had just handed down an historic ruling on health care!

Folks, help me.  Take  it from here.

Boson, quarks and hadrons for an escapist

I'VE JUST READ a piece in The Economist that was all about the Higgs boson, hadrons and quarks. Don't go away. I was lured by the headline: Enemy in sight?, which is a fitting reference to any story out of the Nation's Capital these days. Happily for me, the magazine article had nothing to do with alarmingly wretched politics but rather it dealt with the 40-year search for something called the Higgs boson. Don't go away.

As I burrowed through the exotic language for an atom of meaning , I finally conceded that for one who didn't do well in high school physics, the tale of the Higgs boson left me at the starting gate. Still, everything has a purpose, I suppose. For me in times like these, it was good to read something that was an unintelligible escape from the otherwise inexplicable folly of our everyday world. To show my appreciation, I may try to work quarks and hadrons into my later posts if I ever figure out what they mean.