Finding a Higgs-Boson-Consistent Particle Is So Cool We Don’t Know How to Express It: Here’s a Sonnet

But this is just noted sharpie-wielding math and science expert Vihart‘s take on CERN’s announcement that they’ve found, to within 99.9999% sureity, a new type of boson. And that that new particle, so far as we can tell (pending more research), conforms to the theoretical qualities of a Higgs boson. You might also be interested in knowing a bit more about what a Higgs boson is, and why it’s important. For that, we can go to Jorge Cham‘s, of PHD Comics, cartoon rendering of a scientist’s explanation:

Dark Matters from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

And after that, maybe you’d like to see the actual press conference with real, live, CERN physicists? Or hear about how its discovery has lost Stephen Hawking $100? Or think about how fact that the particle’s discovery happened to coincide with Independence Day in America, which is ironic considering that Congress pulled the plug on an already in construction Large Hadron Collider in Texas in 1993, requiring the program to relocated to Switzerland? If we were to reccomend anything, though, it would be io9’s breakdown of the discovery and what it means for the Standard Model, the system of fundamental principles on which we like to think the universe runs. And finally, if you’ll indulge me in a little PG-13 language:

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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