Now to Find the Satan Particle

Well they've finally done it.  After spending billions of dollars, digging more tunnels than the inmates at Colditz and almost dumping the planet into a mini black hole the team at the Large Hadron Collider have finally achieved something more than just sitting around bashing their bosons.  The elusive Higgs boson, the so called "God Particle" (so called mainly by people who don't know what they're talking about) has finally been captured, photographed, tagged and released back into the wild so we can study its mating habits.  The excitement in Geneva had to be believed to be seen.  Professor Higgs himself shed a tear and the festivities went on into the early hours of the afternoon.

One can understand the delight of Professor Higgs.  Finally, after all these years, it looks as though he has given his name to something which, on the balance of probabilities, is more likely to exist than not.  Or something like that.  Of course this is only the beginning.  It is not definite proof.  Nevertheless the results gained so far are what sub atomic particle physicists called a five sigma result (and they wonder why they got beaten up in school).  This is the way physicists measure the likelihood of a previously untried experiment being accurate.  The more sigmas you get the less likely it is that you got your results purely by coincidence.  Five sigmas is pretty damned high, to get any more you would have to have a signed autograph from the Higgs boson itself.  For the layman a five sigma result can be defined as "far more certain than the likelihood of your reprobate son dropping in for a visit and only slightly less likely than the chance of rain at a garden wedding."  Any result greater than five sigmas (particularly in sub atomic particle physics) is likely to actually warp reality itself.  Which means that while the experiment will still be valid it is possible the universe it is taking place in won't be.

Once somebody recreates the experiment and gets the same results it will be officially proved.  At least, something will be officially proved.  It isn't as though they now have a box of Higgs bosons hanging around that they can hand out to schoolchildren touring the collider.  In fact they haven't actually encountered a Higgs boson at all.  The Higgs boson is a shy and retiring beast, rather like like leopards at the national park I visited in Nepal many years ago.  The rangers assured us there were leopards there, they found occasional tracks and droppings but nobody should expect to actually see one.  As it is with the leopard so it is with the Higgs boson.  What has actually been discovered is the sort of effects one might expect to encounter if a Higgs boson had recently been in the room but had just stepped to answer a call of nature.

So that's it then, mystery solved, universe explained, shut down the collider, unshackle the scientists and let them go home to their families.  Well, not quite.  There are still questions to answer.  Of course there are.  There is a model for how the Higgs boson is supposed to behave.  Some of the results have shown certain deviations from this model.  It is not certain what "type" of Higgs boson we have encountered.  At some point you just have to assume that the universe is simply screwing with us.  But perhaps this is a good thing.  After all we have that atom smasher and all those tunnels, if there wasn't anything left to do with them there would be nothing for it but to turn the thing into an amusement park ride for kids.  I'd buy a ticket for sure if I got the opportunity to play a game of pin the sub atomic particle trail on the boson.