The Unscientific Things That the Higgs Boson Taught Us

We’re not even going to try and explain the significance of the Higgs boson  discovery  observation, but we did an find a lot of non-sciencey things that the Higgs boson taught us, which is a lot easier than explaining gammas, sigmas, and hadrons.

RELATED: CERN Scientists Say They Found Evidence of Higgs Boson

It Cost Stephen Hawking $100: 

“It seems I have just lost $100,” the physics superstar said in an Associated Press report, referring to a 48-year-old bet he had with another scientist that the Higgs boson would never be discovered. 

RELATED: Why to Care About Bottling Antimatter: Could Fuel Starships

Islam Has No Problem with The God Particle; Catholics Refuse to be Trolled: 

Props go out to Vice’s Joshua Haddow, Oz Katerji, Monica Heisey who cued up their rolodexes and polled religious leaders about what the Higgs boson (and presumably science) means for their belief systems. “We will still continue to believe in God and for all people of faith, God does exist and he will continue to exist,” Mohammad Shahid Raza O.B.Q. told them.  Which seems pretty earnest when compared to the spokesperson for the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, who stated “We know what you’re doing and we don’t want to be drawn into this.”

RELATED: Want to Make a Lot of Money? The Answer Is Science

CERN Scientists Are Either  (a.) Not Concerned With Fonts (b.) Typeface Trolls: 

In between the cheers and laypeople Wikipediaing exactly what the Higgs boson actually is, there was palpable disgust. Digust that CERN presented what may be the biggest scientific breakthrough in the past 30 years in Comic Sans (pictured above). “[W]e were blown away by the fact that a team made up of some of the most undoubtedly brilliant people in the world believe that Comic Sans is an appropriate font for such a historic occasion,” The Verge’s Sam Byford wrote. He also pointed out that even Vincent Connare, designer of the much-maligned font, thought the font choice was pretty terrible (in a smirky way of course) : 

@ProfBrianCox what’s with the shit slides! Where is Alice?

— Vincent Connare (@VincentConnare) July 4, 2012

The more common reaction:

@ProfBrianCox @VincentConnare If you have no taste. Using Comic Sans (except in comic strips) is like doing physics in Imperial units.

— Alastair Houghton (@alastairh) July 4, 2012

Higgs Now Has His Boson

Yay for happy endings! Nevermind that “he was no good in the lab”, Peter Higgs finally has his boson. As Reuters’ Robert Evans reports, Higgs once had a paper he wrote rejected by an academic physics journal edited at CERN, but he didn’t hold any grudges. “For me personally it is just the confirmation of something I did 48 years ago, and it is very satisfying to be proved right in some way.” He also said, “I haven’t been dreaming about it for 48 years because I had other things to do with my life. At the beginning, I had no expectation that I would still be alive when it happened.” Awwwwww. 

RELATED: CERN Gets Closer to Proving It Broke the Light Speed Barrier

Science Can Be Funny (Sorta): 

There’s proof that we don’t really need to understand what it is we’re making fun of: 

Overheard on the newsdesk: “I don’t care what the Higgs boson headline is, just make sure we spell Hadron correctly.”

— Guardian style guide (@guardianstyle) July 4, 2012

And:

“Are You There God Particle? It’s Me, Average Person That Doesn’t Understand You”

— Steve Murray (@NPsteve) July 4, 2012

And:

Discovery of Higgs boson a blow to Bravo’s upcoming reality show America’s Next Top Standard Model.

— Adam Rogers (@jetjocko) July 4, 2012

Hey, we said “sorta.”

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