CERN Scientists Looking for the Force

An anonymous reader writes "National Geographic has a fascinating article on the God Particle, which can help explain the Standard Model and get us closer to explain the Grand Unified Theory. The obligatory Star Wars-angle summary is even better: 'CERN's scientists, the fine people who brought us the W and Z particles, anti-hydrogen atoms and hyperlinked porn web pages, are now hard at work building the Large Hadron Collider to discover something even cooler: the Force. Yes, that Force. Or like physicists call it, the Higgs boson, a particle that carries a field which interacts with every living or inert matter.'"

Comments

Re:What?

[The Ancients]

No. According to Newton's Law of Gravitation the force of gravitation allows two particles with mass to attract one another.

This doesn't cover all particles.

Re:What?

[MightyMartian]

Unfortunately folks are mixing Newtonian and Einsteinian explanations of gravity. In Newtonian physics, the particles exert attraction on one another, in Einsteinian physics spacial geometry is curved around gravity wells (whether that's an atom, a human or a black hole), and it is that curvature that causes bodies to attract.

Cue the bowling ball on the mattress with the marble moving towards it. That's a reasonable analogy of what goes on.

Then cue quantum mechanics, which takes such a delightful model and tosses it on its head.

Re:Obligatory

[fbjon]

I wonder how many papers/emails/reports/whatever have been written where a d/r reversal typo has made its way to the final draft. At least a few, it would seem.