Seriously, stop calling it the "God Particle"

[UberNoodle]

Never heard it called that - but I see what you're saying.

I think that the term 'God particle' is a bit self-conflicting, mixing religious and scientific terminology together.

That's like calling gravity the 'Christ force'

Christ Force is awesome!

religious and science satire, i wonder why it never caught on? Oh yeah the whiners.

Never heard it called that - but I see what you're saying.

I think that the term 'God particle' is a bit self-conflicting, mixing religious and scientific terminology together.

That's like calling gravity the 'Christ force'

Christ Force is awesome!

This is blasphemy! We all know that gravity is the result of the Flying Spaghetti Monster pushing us down gently with his noodly appendage!

Screw it, that's an awesome name. From now on gravity will be referred to as Christ Force!

For some reason, I think of the poster of Tron.
Christ FORCE!!!!!!!!!!

 

[KirbyKrackle]

Rational individuals do not get butthurt over metaphors spoken with poetic license.

Any questions?

Yes, what led you to believe this person was in any way "hurt" or offended by the use of term "god particle", as opposed to simply mildly exasperated? I'm curious.

I'll try to explain the point to you, so you understand before you get overly defensive over the part of the statement that actually doesn't matter at all.

Particle physics often names things with whimsy rather than with 'technical terms.'

Units of measure like the 'barn' and 'outhouse', quarks that are 'strange' or 'charmed', 'spin', 'strong', 'weak', etc. 'God particle' is just yet another aspect of poetic license that is commonly used by this particular facet of the scientific community, one that is unique.

It's one of the things that is beautiful about that science.

Loosen up, yo.

Now I'm curious as to why you think I'm being defensive, heh (and you never did answer my question). Also, while whimsical and charming and all that, terms like "strange quark" and "charm quark" are still the technical terms actually used by the scientific community. "God particle", on the other hand, is really more common as a lay person's term, and a poorly understood one at that, hence the problem for the physicists. I've never witnessed anyone in the physics community offended by the term's use. Irritated though? Oh my yes.

 

[chuketek]

...why he had referred to it as the "God particle," he replied "because I can't call it the Goddamn particle".

Side note, there is the OMG particle, which is a name I have no problems with. Mainly because it's awesome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-energy_cosmic_ray#Observational_history

 

[emeraldrafael]

How would you know off hand how many people at CERN are atheist? is it some kinda prerequisite for the job or something?

Anyway, more to the discussion part, I havent been following this. it honestly hasnt sparked my interest enoug, cause I just dont care. Its not affecting my life and most likely wont ever (unless it destroys the world or something). So whether you call it a God Particle or a Higgs Boson is meaningless to me as a Roman Catholic.

...

though I have to say, its always "refreshing" when an nonreligious/religous person has a run in with an individual of the other group and then has to make it as if the group is against them. because thats clearly never been done before on here.

 

[IkeGreil29]

Congrats on such an awesome job.
That aside, it'd be like asking people to stop thinking of evolution as a "I adapt to survive automatically" rather than "I am the product of random mutations which luckily made my ancestors survive and therefore be able to transfer it all the way down to me".

 

[DracoSuave]

Now I'm curious as to why you think I'm being defensive, heh (and you never did answer my question). Also, while whimsical and charming and all that, terms like "strange quark" and "charm quark" are still the technical terms actually used by the scientific community. "God particle", on the other hand, is really more common as a lay person's term, and a poorly understood one at that, hence the problem for the physicists. I've never witnessed anyone in the physics community offended by the term's use. Irritated though? Oh my yes.

And they can take it up with the guy who coined the phrase [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Lederman] and who, in writing his book [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle:_If_the_Universe_Is_the_Answer,_What_Is_the_Question%3F], brought knowledge of the Higgs boson hypothesis into the lay-persons' understanding.

 

[KirbyKrackle]

Now I'm curious as to why you think I'm being defensive, heh (and you never did answer my question). Also, while whimsical and charming and all that, terms like "strange quark" and "charm quark" are still the technical terms actually used by the scientific community. "God particle", on the other hand, is really more common as a lay person's term, and a poorly understood one at that, hence the problem for the physicists. I've never witnessed anyone in the physics community offended by the term's use. Irritated though? Oh my yes.

And they can take it up with the guy who coined the phrase [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Lederman] and who, in writing his book [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle:_If_the_Universe_Is_the_Answer,_What_Is_the_Question%3F], brought knowledge of the Higgs boson hypothesis into the lay-persons' understanding.

Oh, I'm sure that's unnecessary; he seems to be aware of the issue and a bit ambivalent about it himself: http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/04/09/is-god-particle-the-right-term-for-massive-mystery-in-physics/

Higgs seems a bit put out too.

At any rate, I think you're a bit off about it being a common term in the scientific community (although perhaps it is used by physicists in your area?). It seems "Higgs boson" is more typical for the physicists while "god particle" is really more a case of one person using the term and it then getting picked up by the media (it's such a perfectly sexy and controversial term, after all; I'm sure reporters quite frequently bank on the misunderstanding in order to start a kerfluffle over the article.) It would seem that perfectly rational people in the scientific community do get "butthurt" over the use of the term "god particle" and for perfectly rational reasons too (such as it causing unnecessary confusion and misleading people as to what the physicists are actually doing)!

EDIT: Also the comedy goldmine that is the comments section of the article I just linked to demonstrates one of the problems with the "god particle" term: its tendency to derail sane discussions about physics very, very quickly (like, first sentence quickly in this case) into how the evil scientists are trying to replace God, etc. because people completely misunderstand what's actually going on based on the terminology.

 

[chuketek]

How would you know off hand how many people at CERN are atheist? is it some kinda prerequisite for the job or something?

I have no idea how many are atheists. What I said was that I doubt any are any creationists (I could be wrong, there may be one or two).
There are plenty of Christians at CERN.
I don't even have any particular problem with creationists, I do have a problem with the media popularising a term which causes misunderstandings.

 

[Ytinasni]

Wait, it's actually called that outside of Angels and Demons? What the hell?! :S

And Genesis was a damn poem, as in, not to be taken literally. For crying out loud, how many times do I need to say this to damn creationists (I'm not shouting at you, OP, or anyone else, but expressing my annoyance at this ignorance).

Anyway, kudos on where you work, seriously good stuff man!

As someone of a slightly more scientific mind who also happens to be christian (I know, I'm a living oxymoron) I would hope that noone would take the old testament literally though I find that that is just not going to happen based on the history of the subject.

And I know its hard to believe this but believe it or not the only things christianity state with certainty are the existence of God and that Christ died on the cross for our sins and that eventually there will be rapture at some undetermined point in time. (as well as some of the details that go into that concept, but you get the picture- nothing about christianity states that there is something wrong with trying to understand how the universe ticks-editgoeshere: in fact, I'd hazard a guess that even though genesis "explains" creation, it's meant to be taken in a meta way just to emphasize the omnipotence of God rather than a brief history of how the world was made)

My dad always taught me that the universe was created to be understood with math and as an extension physics, we just haven't figured it all out yet.

Good luck to you folks at CERN who are less interested in atheism vs religion and more interested in understanding.

 

[Spaloooooka]

why don't you try accelerating U-235 atoms? I'm sure if those babies hit they'd make for some interesting results.

Failing this, couldn't you get 2 sets of atoms going at once, and then have 2 collisions in close proximity to each other, so the remains of one collision are hit by a second. the up and down could be hit by the top and bottom and be split further.

What makes you think we don't accelerate heavy ions? although U235 might be pushing things a bit we do spend a month or so per year using lead ions. No good for Higgs searches but very useful for Quark-Gluon plasma research.
Also, for a variety of reasons, I'm afraid the second idea wouldn't work (although I guess it's mostly a joke?). We already squeeze the beam to a few micrometers for the collisions and to get collisions "in close proximity" the timing would need to be closer than the already nanosecond-order time the particle bunch spends colliding. Plus you can't *split* up and down at the energies this would involve (if indeed they can be split at all).

It was mostly a joke. I know that splitting the various quarks is something the 'next' collider won't even come close to. I know 'you' do heavy ions in there but I had an inkling that something as big a 235 would be pushing it. What if you tried getting a load of Ununoctium? The proximity I meant, a lapse on my part, was time. So you've got the 2 collisions next to each other at roughly the same time and then you've got a second series collide just after. I know aligning and timing on that scale is unbelievably difficult but, what if you got a load of ions to collide at exaclty the same point? maybe the temperature build up might make a difference.

Also, what would happen to a solid state structure, such as Ice or salt [KCl]? I mean a few nano grams of a solid crystal state. Wouldn't it be possible - huge leap I know - to align the Anions of the 2 crystals so all the energy of the crystal collide through just one atom?

I haven't heard much of what happens when you do this to irratiated stuffs, say...cobolt. Or maybe I've just been missing out.

If not a kitten, then what about a hamster?

 

[Cowabungaa]

So please, can we stop calling it the "God Particle", it gives a great number of people completely the wrong idea. Please?

Eh, don't bother. There's no point in pleasing the sort of people you talked with while waiting for that bus. It's not the sort of thing you can reason with, mainly because it's not based on reason.

Regardless, you are right that calling it the 'God particle" is a stellar example of sensationalist media. In a way it's understandable. Fact is, a lot of science, especially in this highly theoretical and cutting edge field, is mind boggingly hard to understand, even for people who are into that sort of thing. Regular folks? Don't even bother. So, because they still have to sell their articles and get readers, journalists try to make up all kinds of silly names for important scientific things.

And I know its hard to believe this but believe it or not the only things christianity state with certainty are the existence of God and that Christ died on the cross for our sins and that eventually there will be rapture at some undetermined point in time.

You'd think that you as a scientist would see the silliness of stating those things with certainty. And did you know the whole Rapture thing was mainly a product of 18th and 19th century scholars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture#Doctrinal_history] Oh yeah, very Christian.

 

[The Lugz]

I always assumed it's the idea that it holds everything together on a fundamental level that is unseen

much like faith does for organised religion
you could call it a joke at religion's expense

maby I over-thought it, damn journalists.

 

[Griffolion]

As someone of a slightly more scientific mind who also happens to be christian (I know, I'm a living oxymoron) I would hope that noone would take the old testament literally though I find that that is just not going to happen based on the history of the subject.

And I know its hard to believe this but believe it or not the only things christianity state with certainty are the existence of God and that Christ died on the cross for our sins and that eventually there will be rapture at some undetermined point in time. (as well as some of the details that go into that concept, but you get the picture- nothing about christianity states that there is something wrong with trying to understand how the universe ticks-editgoeshere: in fact, I'd hazard a guess that even though genesis "explains" creation, it's meant to be taken in a meta way just to emphasize the omnipotence of God rather than a brief history of how the world was made)

My dad always taught me that the universe was created to be understood with math and as an extension physics, we just haven't figured it all out yet.

Good luck to you folks at CERN who are less interested in atheism vs religion and more interested in understanding.

Yeah I agree with what you say here, especially that last sentence. The sad truth is that there will always be anti-theist individuals who will take the Old Testament down the 'literal' route to further their own arguments, accomplishing nothing.

By the way, I don't at all think you're a living oxymoron. Faith in something that, as you say, places no limits on what we may understand through our own discovery is nothing to baulk at at all.

Genesis is a poem?

Ive never heard of that.

Sorry for being brash about that, there is discussion in theological circles that Genesis was written poetically, or at least in a narrative fashion, and thus is to be taken as such, not literally. It makes sense that this has been purported, as when you read Genesis (or at least the creation bit at the start) it has a certain rhythm to it, and the consistent and repetitive use of the numbers 3, 7 and 10 in certain concepts is very interesting. I simply agree with this viewpoint.

Even if you're right (about Genesis being a poem), that doesn't mean that it's automatically false.

Anyway, it seems more narrative to me.

I never said it was automatically false, I simply said it isn't to be taken literally. And you're right in that it is narrative in certain aspects.