How The "God Particle" Got Its Name

We expect interesting news in the world of physics in the next few minutes. Are researchers at the Large Hadron Collider, to make an announcement at 1 pm GMT. We know that there is no "discovery" of the Higgs boson by itself - ". Five sigma result," the conventional threshold for discovery is five standard deviations, called This means that there are only about a one in a million chances that their results are the consequence of a statistical fluke. However, rumors have been flying around the blogs over a three-sigma result, or one chance in an error-mil a result of Higgs has been discovered somewhere around 125GeV brand. (For more information a bit more on what is a 125GeV Higgs, check out my post a few weeks ago).

We know that is likely to be very rewarding, because, as Ian Sample The Guardian wrote last week, the heads of the two working groups of the call will not be any graduate student or postdoctoral junior.

But the real question is: Why is it called the God particle? It is not the God particle. It has nothing to do with God, religion, nothing to do with creation. Or at least no more than any other particle.

The name was Leon Lederman, a Nobel laureate in physics, for the title of a book ("If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the question that the God particle") is created. But it was not what I wanted to call it. At first wanted to call the particle "Damn," because (according to Marcelo Gleiser Lederman postdoctoral single) "could not find the thing." But his publisher convinced him of "the God particle more copies' would sell. We do not know if it's true, but what is certain is the name stuck.

Physicists in general, I wish they were not. Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University physicist, for the first time the existence of bosons, does not like the name: "I find it shameful, because although I do not believe, I think it's the kind of abuse of terminology, which I think that offend some people could, "he told The Guardian last three years.

More than that, it is a mistake. When the LHC, the fire began two years ago prepared a lot of people paranoid theories doomsday terrible about the way that could create a black hole and destroy the earth to create. A large part of the terrorists seemed to come from the partnership with God Particle, and therefore Armageddon.

On the positive side, it is a triumph of public relations. If the particles were press offices, which use it as a case study of how to use public awareness about how many people have to say as the Higgs boson, which a gluon, a W boson or heard? Presumably, the charm quark is yes sorry for not Satan called The Blob or something in the 1960's.

However, we can all get used to it. For better or for worse, the name seems to be with us forever.

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