Hallelujah, it's the Higgs

By Capt. Fogg

So it may be the long-sought Higgs particle observed by CERN and announced officially today. It also might not be, and of course this "God Particle" really has nothing at all to do with God or gods or proofs thereof. We owe that idea not to physicists but to journalists who don't know a Boson from a Bos'n but know anything they can dishonestly and ignorantly claim to be about scientific proof for any kind of God will attract ratings like mass attracts other mass.

The whole world thinks there is one Higgs, but there could be many of them,

said Dr. Joe Incandela of the University of California, Santa Barbara, a spokesman for one of the two groups reporting their data today. So far, the unofficial theologians of the press haven't mentioned the pantheistic possibilities should super-symmetry and its attendant multiplicity of Higgs particles be the next theory to be backed up by the world;s most powerful and expensive physics experiment, still only running at half power. Even if it isn't, and whether we have the Higgs particle or something that doesn't quite fit the model, we've had another giant step for mankind, not that many in the U.S. will take much notice. A door has been opened to a whole new level of understanding and that reveals many other doors. It's another giant step away from mythology and speculation as the key to understanding.

Perhaps few will notice that this was a discovery made in Europe because we decided we couldn't afford such a machine and the next most powerful accelerator at Fermilab was shut down last year because you can't have wars and tax cuts and take giant steps even though, of course, we're Number One and the greatest country in the history of the galaxy and the only place where freedom rings. Who wants all those scientists here anyway, taking jobs away from Americans and looking down on us all -- confusing us with talk about reality being far more complex than you can dream about -- infinitely more complex than the Bible tells us. It's not a sad failure, it's a victory!

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)