The “God Particle” Was a Crock of S%&#.
Called “the most important discovery of the century,” there’s still reason to doubt the Higgs boson
In his book The Particle at the End of the Universe, author and physicist Sean Carroll wrote: “Does anyone really believe that God plays favorites with the particles?”
He was referring to the ridiculous nickname for the Higgs boson — “The God Particle” — but there’s a certain irony in the statement. Carroll and other modern theorists do, genuinely, seem believe that God “plays favorites with the particles.” In a modern equivalent to the Fire, Air, Earth, and Water elements of Greek philosophy, the Standard Model divides reality into a variety of specific particles that carry out very specific forces: Photons carry out the electromagnetic force, gluons carry out the strong force binding quarks together, W and Z bosons carry out the short-ranged weak force, “gravitons” supposedly carry out the gravitational force, and now the Higgs boson carries out the Higgs mechanism.
To Standard Model physicists, there really exist these completely distinct forces on a fundamental level, that have no direct interaction with each other, operate according to completely different rules, and employ forms of matter of a completely different character. They each possess unique fields…
