Nukular Fizzicks Fer Dummy's

Do I have to splain everything? Sigh.

Them scientologists over in Yerp want to find a teensy tiny particle called the Higgs Boson. Hey, there's a dude called Higgs here in Embra, I wonder if he's heard of it? Nah, what are the chances?

Seems the Merkans were too poor to afford both a Space Station and a Particle Smasher, so they abandoned their own little spermint after spending just two billion dollars on it, and concentrated on something that can only be reached by the soon-to-be-decommissioned Space Shuttle and the Dirty Commie Soyuz rockets. I ain't sayin', I'm just sayin'.

Anyways, the science part.

The universe is made up of stuff. Most of that stuff is completely invisible and therefore cannot be seen by astrologers with even the most powerful telescopes, even the one buried underneath the ice at the South Pole. (Hey Cletus, you sure about that part?)

But these boffins always need more money are pretty sure that if they smash some normal stuff together at really high speeds, they'll be able to recreate some of the same exotic stuff that was around at the Big Bang. So they'll be using their LHC machine to run one proton beam clockwise at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light, and another beam anticlockwise at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light. Then they'll smash them head-on into each other at - anybody? No? Me neither.

Ok, let's make it really simple.

Atoms are thought to be made up of quarks.

Quark's


Which are held together by gluons.

Glued On


According to String Theory, every particle has a super-partner.

Superpartner


The electron is matched by the selectron, the quark has the squark, the lepton has the slepton etc.

Slept On


But none of this splains the existence of Mass.

Mass


And without mass there would be no gravity.

No Gravity


So Professor Higgs (anybody remember him?) posited the existence of a field - let's call it the Higgs Field - permeating the entire universe, and as we all know from quantum physics, every field comes with a side order of particles. So the Higgs field imbues matter with mass, and the Higgs Boson, if discovered, will prove this impotent theory.

So far, all that has been tested is that a clockwise beam and an anticlockwise beam of protons can be sent around the loop. Next month the eggheads will make their first attempt to cross the streams.

Crossing the Streams


If it all goes tits-up, the absolute worst that can happen is that the Earth and anything else made of matter or energy, like the universe, will be sucked into a black hole.

Black Hole


And if not, well, there'll be plenty more pretty pictures like this one, so stop whining.

LHC First Beam


Any questions?