Ain't no party like a physics party...

Cuz a physics party is prevented from reaching the speed of light by the Higgs Field!

I think...

The putative Higgs boson has been discovered.  What does it all mean?  

No really, what does it all mean?  

NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN????

Ok, let's do some homework.  While putting this post together, my first google image search taught me three things:

1. There are already a ton of internet meme-ready jpeg images of lame Higgs jokes.

2. T-shirt manufacturers were a lot more ready to pounce on this news than many media outlets.

3. Peter Higgs looks a lot like Carl Reiner.

I gotta tell ya, I really enjoyed Ocean's 11.

And those particles were just smashing! Well done!

Also, never mind that "Higgs Boson" sounds like the name of secretly-hot-but-outwardly-nerdy anti-hero in an 80's teen romantic comedy.  I think the plot would go something like this: the popular girl (blonde) copies off of Higgs' homework, but her close proximity to him at just the right moment gets her assigned as his lab partner.  So then all her friends are like, "Hey (blonde) let's go to the mall!" and she's like, "I can't, I have to do a science project with HIGGS BOSON!" And they're all like, "Ew, grody to the max!" But then when she works with Higgs, she finds out that he's really sweet and looks cute without his glasses on, and is so much smarter than this guy, whom she's been dating because she has no self-worth.  So naturally she falls in love with Higgs.  They date briefly, but then realize they don't have much in common and he ends up with his tomboyish best female friend (brunette), who the audience totally knew was perfect for him all along, but he just couldn't see past her ponytail until she got all dolled up for the prom  - IRONY! - and it all ends happily with everybody learning an important lesson about friendship and dancing the night away to this song.  I think Higgs Boson would have been played by a young Patrick Dempsey.

Meet me at CERN, baby.  Let's collide.

See, if we associate the Higgs boson with a cute face like the future McDreamy, maybe more people would be excited by this news (Hear that faint clicking noise? It's a million nerds posting variations of "This gets my electrons into an excited state" - type double-entendres on tumblr.) Because in my opinion,  people in general just aren't amped enough about this. The boson needs a PR rep.  It needs cheerleaders.  It needs an agent.  It needs.... Joe Biden!

THIS IS A BIG F*CKIN' DEAL!

Because it f*cking is.  

In grad school (oh, here we go...) I took these really bitchin' classes : Intro to Science Studies I and II.  And once we got past my professor insisting that we call him by his first name ('Sup, Daniel!), we talked about how science is a big complicated belief system similar to religion.  This got a lot of hard science students in my class kinda riled up (ok, just the 2 - it was a small class) because this makes it sound like science isn't fact-based.  But being fact-based is kind of irrelevant to the discussion, and calling it a belief system does not have to discredit science in any way (I'm about to WAY oversimplify about 2 semesters worth of stuff here).  What I got from this discussion is that science and religion are both monolithic institutions that govern a lot of people's worldviews; some can reconcile both, some can only view them as mutually exclusive, and some can only exist where the two intersect.  Facts, truth, whatever.  Both science and religion hold a lot of meaning, have a lot of followers, and provoke a lot of reaction.  Both belief systems have similar structures, hierarchy and historical trajectories as well.  Religions (and specific religions, like Christianity) have gone through phases where participation by all was encouraged, then later was restricted, and back and forth.  Access to truth, or whatever you want to call it, was once open to discussion and shared by all.  Think about Christ and his homeboys: your basic tax collector, fisherman, or unmarried woman were all hanging out and talking and sharing loaves and fishes.  Later, religious discussion and scholarship became the domain of a select few.  Ability to practice it was likewise restricted, and we end up with divisions like clergy and laypeople.  Again, I'm oversimplifying because I think I have a point.  Somewhere.

It's no small coincidence that we use similar language for science.  Ever hear the phrase "to put it in layman's terms?"  Science as an institution has gone through similar swings in its presence in the popular consciousness.  There's a distinct division between public and private with rules about who gets to make discoveries.   Who gets to play around with it?  Who gets to understand it?  Who gets access to the secrets of the universe and the discoveries that we make about what makes us what we are?  Botany and Astronomy used to welcome participation and discovery by amateurs, where an average person could contribute directly to the field and be an actual part of knowledge production.  This is still done on some level, but I think it's worth noting that a lot of people don't feel like they are allowed access to science, so they don't really make an effort to make science part of their daily lives.  There's the idea that science exists only in the lab; that dudes in white coats with clipboards are the keepers of all that knowledge, protected by this bubble keeping all the rest of us out.  Now this image exists for a reason, because a lot of science has historically been practiced this way.  But I feel like that pendulum could swing right back and break down the bubble any day now, and it should.  If more people felt like science was accessible, it wouldn't be so mysterious and scary; it wouldn't cause so much negative reactionary behavior.  It wouldn't keep out the people it could benefit.  

So let's look at this cultural moment, because yes, science exists within human culture no matter what hard-nosed science purists want to say.  We use language and imagery to describe things, name things, and categorize them.  The key players that could really use this moment to open up science to the eager young minds of today are scientists who aren't just good at what they do, but are good at explaining what they do in, well, for lack of a better phrase, layman's terms.  These people are teachers, or science popularizers, or both.  Like Michio Kaku.  Like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox (whom I totally want to marry).  Like Carl Sagan was.  Like the people who put together this amazing video that I saw on Wired, which takes 7 minutes to explain things it would take me 7 years to understand normally.

The Higgs Boson Explained from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

See - merging science with artistic media makes it all so much easier to take in.  It's inviting.  It's intriguing.  And if we take it in, and talk about it with our friends at parties, then we become part of the bigger conversation.  And that's a big important first step for some people.  Science shouldn't be this big scary thing that frightens away the next potential Einstein, who may turn out to be a girl who keeps being told she'll suck at math because she's, y'know, a girl, Larry Summers.  As a culture, we shape the science that we then in turn look to for answers about what shapes us.  It's a big crazy reflexive process.  We have to handle this dance carefully.  If only a select few contribute to the shaping and presentation of new knowledge, then they control what the general public knows.  I don't have a PhD in physics, but I definitely want in on this party.  I mean, look how much fun they're having in Geneva in this NYTimes photo.

Again, what does it all mean?

So we've got this particle - and it's not alone in its particle-ness. (By the way, "Charm Quark" would totally be the name of the brunette tomboy best friend of Higgs Boson.)   But if we're right about the boson, then we are all in constant interaction with these little particles, and our bodies behave the way they do because of these little particles.  And not just our bodies, but everything that has mass.  Cats, planets, sandwiches, galaxies, everything.  And we are all kind of moving through the Higgs field the way we do because of the bosons informing our mass.  (If I'm getting this metaphor right - I'm not sure.  I was a soft science major.  I was trained to interpret culture, and I pretty much minored in interpreting literature.  I only hope I'm interpreting it well.)  One of the other videos from the Wired link above likens the Higgs field to a kind of comforting cloud around us all the time.  We're all enveloped in it, and move through it toward and away from each other.  I hear that and it makes me think about fairies buzzing around us.  Or fireflies.  I kinda love this idea.

A lot of people are also calling it the God particle, and really, do we need a more explicit symbol than that to show the similarities and NOT the differences between science and religion?  I think calling it that is kind of stupid, really, but if it helps some people come to the party, then fine, put your party pants on and come chase your God particle.  I feel like if you couldn't find God in any other scientific discovery (if that's your thing) then you're not going to find it in the Higgs boson.  If you can't find it in the Grand Canyon or Aurora Borealis or the structure of a nautilus shell, then how are you gonna find it in the Higgs boson?  Because you can't see it?

I also feel like calling it the God particle could do more harm than good.  I get that calling it that means that religious politicians are more likely to fund scientific studies, but then we get back to the conversation of who gets to control knowledge production.  Is it only worth funding if it proves the existence of God?  If so, we haven't come very far.  Calling it this could also lead to reactionary misrepresentation, like when my former students freaked out about evolution because they sure as hell didn't come from monkeys.  (That's right, you sure as hell didn't, I'd say. Let's actually define the word before we panic, hmm?) Plus, bringing up the God particle at this point allows me to use this image I found here.

Charlie V., this is totes for you, bro.

Seriously, what does it all mean?

Atheist, agnostic, and many self-identifying religious practitioners of science alike don't have to use this particular moniker to convey how awesome this discovery is.  I certainly don't, and I have no problem with God. (It's people with whom I generally have problems.)  I think the boson's discovery alone - with all the work that went into it - is an amazing testament to the human mind and spirit, to teamwork and ingenuity and the drive to learn more just for the sake of learning more.  And I think this little particle's existence - especially its ability to create mass, and just the stuff of the universe itself - is a mind-blowing thought.  It makes me think of what Carl Sagan said about stars in Cosmos.  “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” 

And here it is - major belief systems like science, religion, and philosophy are united in the search for meaning. Ultimately, that's why I'm so jazzed about this discovery and where it's going to take us.  If it helps us understand the source of all the mass in the universe, then we can start to figure out dark matter, antimatter, and what-the-hell-ever is going on with black holes.  If we can begin to understand how it began, well, maybe we can be more responsible and look at where we're going with clearer vision.  Does this not get you going?  Does this not excite your electrons?

And ok, I get sentimental about this kinda stuff.  It feels goofy to admit this, but when I think of what Carl Sagan said about how we are all made of starstuff and what that means, I feel a little more connected to the rest of the universe.  And that's kind of a big deal for me.  Whether you're standing on a subway platform or at the beach with your toes just touching the Atlantic, on some fundamental level you're sharing a common source material with everything immediately around you and everything in the far reaches of the universe.  We're connected by this stuff. You and I are connected by this (and if you piss me off, my foot and your face are connected by this.)  If the Higgs boson helps you feel this and see God, that's alright with me.  But if God never enters into this equation for you, but this still brings you some sense of connection, well that's also alright.

It's late and I've been rambling.  But I really am wondering how this discovery is gonna play itself out.  Will there be new university departments dedicated to what the boson can teach us?  Will first graders get to weigh in and be part of this new conversation?  So many questions.  But I know the answer to one, at least.  Who'll play Peter Higgs in the "Boom! There goes the Boson!" a new movie about particle physics coming to a theater near you?  Well, that's obvious.