Seriously, stop calling it the "God Particle"

[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.