Hip hip hooray, the God Particle has been found. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to be shouting alleluia, alleluia. Well, let's put it this way, they sort of think they found the God Particle. You see when it comes to the tiniest particles of matter, scientists don't actually see them. They see traces and they're pretty sure they saw traces of the God Particle.
Subatomic particles leave behind trails after they smash into each other during their short moment of existence; it's like a trail of atomic poop.
Based on this discovery, I think it's time to educate you about the world of subatomic particles. They are teeny tiny entities that make up atoms, molecules, compounds and burritos; in other words, all that there is in the universe. If we are what we eat than we're made of 1 percent of atoms like carbon and phosphorous and the other 99 percent is high fructose corn syrup.
I wish I could promise that what follows is all true but I can't. But neither can anybody in Washington politics and if they can get away with spinning truth, so can I. And by the way, spin is one of the characteristics of a subatomic particle. See, you've learned something already.
Scientists think they spotted a trail of the elusive Higg's Boson which is the scientific name for the God particle. It's the particle that gives other particles mass. Mass is somewhat like bulk, size, expanse. Here's a way to think of it. Kim Kardashian has a very prominent body feature that is her only talent. Kim's trailer has to be the highest concentration of Higgs bosons in the universe. Now do you have a sense of mass?
The Greeks were the first to ponder the makeup of matter. They were famous for philosophy and forming western culture but when it came to atomic science, they were mostly dunces.
Accepted Greek thought was that everything was made from a mixture of fire, water, earth, and air. Socrates was a pretty smart guy when it came to philosophy but his students had great fun with his views on matter. They'd say, "Hey Socrates, what's this stone made of?" He'd scratch his head and say, "Well, it's my highly esteemed opinion, that stone is made of a little air, a little wind, and a lot of earth." Then they'd walk away giggling because he omitted fire and water. He was known around the school as the Joe Biden of scientists.
But then along came a Greek thinker named Democritus who declared that things are made of "atoms" which was a pretty darn good guess since he had nothing to divide matter other than his Swiss Army knife. He also declared way back then that an actor named Arnold Schwarzenegger would someday win an Oscar, proving nobody can bat a thousand.
J.J. Thompson discovered the electron in 1897. He went running up the stairs from his basement laboratory exclaiming proudly to his wife, "Dear, I've discovered the electron. She replied," Oooh, how super. Now why don't you make yourself useful and discover the washboard and do a little laundry around here? How about discovering the broom and dust pan and do a little sweeping? How about discovering the laundry bin for your underwear? How about discovering the towel to dry some dishes? How about discovering the mop for the floors? You can't discover a cleaning rag, but Mr. Smarty Pants discovers an electron. How many electrons will it take to pay the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker? How many electrons for a loaf of bread? GET A JOB!!!"
Ernest Rutherford discovered in 1911 that the nucleus of the atom was tiny and dense. His wife replied on that discovery, "Speaking of dense, my dearest Ernest, when I wrote on the shopping list that I wanted a pound of butter, you brought home a pound of blubber. So guess what you're having for dinner, my scientific genius?"
Years ago they found the real tiny particle called a neutrino which is the Italian word for "little neutral one," sort of the Danny De Vito of the atomic world. One neutrino can pass through miles of lead with ease.
A neutrino is so tiny it's actually smaller that the truth behind a political promise. They are so small that a trillion can pass through the tip of your finger in one second. Unfortunately, not one can make it through my nose.
For discovering this God Particle boson, praises go out to the LHC in Switzerland. For those of you who are not fans of sub-atomic particles, that's the Large Hadron Collider which cost about $13 billion to find this tiny particle. That works out to about $48 gaziIlion per pound. How our federal government never designed this project is a mystery.
The collider that found the particle did it by smashing other particles together. The collision causes tremendous temperatures that come close to equaling the contents of the hottest thing in the universe; the cantina burrito with border sauce.
These collisions are similar to what happened at the Big Bang. Scientists believe there was nothing before the Big Bang which created the universe. So in their religion nothing created everything which is the ultimate free lunch.
Don't confuse the LHC it with the Tiny Hadron Collider. That's what the scientists use to crack walnuts during lunch breaks.
Look at your hand, go ahead look at it. That thing is made of particles called protons, neutrons, electrons, bosons, and a whole lot of other particles. So one way of looking at much of what we do here in America is use sub-atomic particles to shove other subatomic particles in our mouth. Then we belch.
Basically the stuff we are jamming into our mouth is dirt. The Biblical description of our existence tells us that God took some earth, molded it, blew into it life and there stood a self-aware man named Adam. Evolutionists would say, No, no, you creationists are idiots. It happened this way: We humans evolved over billions of years from pond slime that had a bunch of lucky random mutations occur to it. Then the pond slime became fancier pond slime which eventually became something that creeped and crawled by a series of lucky mutations. And now we have creepy mutations in Washington promising to make our lives better even though our lives have no meaning.
Now scientists have discovered things called up quarks and down quarks which are the ingredients for bigger particles like neutrons and protons. They are held in place by weak and strong forces, the latter force obviously is found lacking in the Buffalo Bills defensive line.
This is all so confusing and we haven't even talked about the other vast segment of the universe of antiparticles. Yup, for every particle there is an anti-particle. There conceivably could be an Anti-Earth somewhere where things are the opposite of here; like surprise, Fredonia sells water to Dunkirk because Lake Erie dries up: the Detroit Tigers win the Anti-World Series, and Washington politicians actually tell the truth.
The sad news is, once we figure out what matter and anti-matter is made of, that's only 10 percent of the battle. Our next task is to understand Dark Matter that makes up 90 percent of the universe. So far, the one piece of evidence that we have of this stuff is the Buffalo Bills Playbook.
Nin Privitera is a Fredonia resident.
