Quantum Physics

Well the most expensive game of hide and seek may finally be coming to an end. Congratulations to the scientists at CERN, who were "it", for finding the Higgs particle. It was hiding in a 5 billion dollar particle accelerator, which is exactly where I would have hidden. So what is the Higgs boson? I hear its part of a vast field of bosons that determines a particle's mass. This discovery means we could possibly travel at light speed! (Follow this link.) If I understand this correctly, and I got an A in my physics of the universe class so I'm confident I do, this discovery may lead us to an amazing new weight loss exercise routine called a Higgs Jig. A dance that would essentially eliminate our mass by manipulating the Higgs field around us. And if you make something weightless, you make it easier to accelerate. So lets just say  for fun, if you had no mass you could essentially flick someone into outer space like a bugger, unless the bugger person would just pass right through you because they had no mass. Maybe you could just kept a thin shell of mass around them...ummm here's an expert explaining the Higgs boson.

OK so he said the Higgs field is like snow, and the top quark is like a snow boots guy who falls deep into the snow. Does that help? Because if it doesn't, in the last week I've heard 9 or 10 different analogies explaining the Higgs field. All the different analogies only made me more confused. One guy said the Higgs field is like a ping pong table and some balls (particles) bounce as higher than others, another guy said the Higgs field was like his fathers acceptance which was given freely to one son but withheld it from the other, and another man explained the Higgs field using a multi variable calculus equation, which of course was the analogy that finally drove it home for me. 

Moving on to my favorite form of research, TV. Watching Star Trek is how I first became interested in quantum physics. Well Quarks anyway.

I noticed Star Trek liked to pay homage to science by naming characters after cool sounding sciencey stuff like Data, Rom, Quark and uh Bones I guess. In turn, science has paid homage to Star Trek by leading us to devolop Star Trek technology, like automatic doors at grocery stores, iPads and maybe someday a transporter. Transporter is not a very cool sounding sciencey name for a device that beams you one particle at a time from one place to another at light speed, maybe it will be called something like a Particle Shatner. For more transporter stuff read this.


Lastly, the discovery of the Higgs boson might help to explain what all that dark matter is in the universe. I only bring up dark matter to say this. If dark matter tastes anything like dark chocolate, I say no thank you sir, unless there are almonds in it, then maybe... look, quantum physics jokes are never easy to pull off. I was tempted to end on a boson the clown bit or a two massless particles walk through a bar joke, but I wont. Your welcome.