Physics Circle Jerk

[drewcypher]

As part of my job, I write news releases, in part to explain the very technical things we, in TV, do to the general public and tv writers. You know... morons. I keep the language very simple, direct and understandable

Comments

[starryniteynite]

Hope you don't mind if I jump in--I'm no particle physicist, but I am in a related field. And blerg to that press release--bad scientist, no biscuit

[starryniteynite]

sorry--the link didn't work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt

I think my favorite comparison is that a mosquito's kinetic energy is about 1 TeV.So imagine two mosquito's flying at one another, full speed, hitting head-on.

[drewcypher]

Thank you for that wholly understandable, yet succinct and erudite explanation.

It seems antithetical to scientists to talk about "the God Particle," as opposed to a Higgs-Boson particle, but it is infinitely more descriptive to a layman. You're trying to discover the nature of the origin of the universe by attempting to discover this very iny thing. OK, I can relate to that.

Scientists FAIL when they try to rename a popularly accepted term. "The champagne bottle particle?" Boo. No. Let the marketers market and you do the brainiac stuff, alright professor?

[starryniteynite]

"The champagne bottle particle?"

*Headdesk*

[drewcypher]

This is from Wikipedia, so grain of salt and all that:
"The Higgs boson is often referred to as "the God particle" by the media, after the title of Leon Lederman's book, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? While use of this term may have contributed to increased media interest in particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider, it is disliked by scientists as overstating the importance of the particle. In a renaming competition, a jury of physicists chose the name "the champagne bottle boson" as the best popular name.

Best by who again? Oh. Scientists. FAIL