The God particle

The Large hedron Collidor is back in business , but things are not quite rosy, the Fermi Lab in US is moving swiftly to the ultimate question, the ultimate answer to this one is not 42!. FermiLab is reporting that the possible territory for the Higgs boson has shrunk

If the Higgs Boson is not found experimentally then that would mean the collapse of The Standard Model. So far its the only particle in the model that has not been experimentally verified.

A little bit of googling will lead you to Leon M Lederman, (no I wont provide the link here, go find it out yourself), he was the one who first coined the term God particle, in his book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?.

In that he vents his initial frustration with funding "Junking the SSC would free up $11 Bn, that would fund a cornucopia of other physics experiments.plug up the deficit eradicate national debt, banish poverty , cure acne and bring us peace in our time !"

A somewhat similar argument was raised when CERN went online, shouldnt we be diverting the fund to feed hungry mouths , rather than satisfy the curiosity of some nerds.

Anyways moving along The essence of the book is captured through a famous quote by Democritus of Adbera
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space, everything else is just an opinion"

A belief was articulated that " A seemingly complex world is intrinsically simple. The genesis of physics is astronomy because the earliest philosophers looked up in awe at the night sky and saught logical models to explain it. Soon scientists turned their attention inwards" possibly cause of the strain on their neck muscles "They saw apples falling from trees, pendulums, flight path of an arrow, winds, tides and we got Physics.

This so far is a pretty interesting read