A physics teacher and another teacher had a conversation this week in my hearing: it was regarding the upcoming experiments at CERN and it went something like this...
Non-physicist: So tell me again, why are they doing these experiments at CERN?
Physicist: They're trying to find Higg's Boson.
Non-physicist: What if the experiments fail and they don't find it? Does that mean that Higg's Boson doesn't exist.
Physicist: It doesn't mean Higg's Boson, doesn't exist. It means they haven't found it yet. It's possible that Higg's Boson does exist elsewhere in the universe. Just because we haven't seen it, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, it just means that we heaven't found it.
Let me emphasise that line again, "Just because we haven't seen it, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist,"
That's amazing! How can we be so arrogant to decide that something (or someone, say God) doesn't exist because we haven't seen it? Physicists, I love you!
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I think the fundamental difference here is that scientific theory states that the Higg's boson exists. Furthermore, the Higg's field, of which the Higg's boson is a quantum component, effectively allows all particles of non-zero mass to exist, so it's pretty important. Important but elusive. Well, at least, that's how I see it.
And they'd love you too Harks, if only they knew you.
Simon. Who are 'they' you refer to, just out of interest?
'They' are the physicists, surely. From your post: "Physicists, I love you!" Have we found the Higg's Boson yet? Oooo, there's one over there . . . wait a sec . . .
oh yeah - duh! I know do know some physicists actually and they're pretty spot on.
I don't think they'll actually find one for a while yet. I heard it was going to be about 18 months before there'll be any results... but what then? does it mean that the grand unification theorem will finally be proved?
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