Phenomenologist

The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics.

My physics teacher at school was rumored to be an alcoholic, apparently he would drink vodka in a white painted milk bottle in class so everyone would think it was milk. This was my explanation for receiving the mark I did for Physics. It all seemed to make sense at the time, I couldn’t learn physics as a direct result of him being an alcoholic. He would say things to the class which I simply assumed to be the ramblings of a drunken man. It was a foreign language. He would scribble things on the blackboard, little symbols, small apostrophes, lots of X & Y’s with little numbers above them and then turn to the class.

 ‘Any questions?’

Hmmm, how about fuck yes?

Lets start at the top left hand corner of the board and explain to me what that little angled dash means, if its not just a piece of chalk dust settling on your vodka laced spit.

A good team moves at the speed of the slowest member and in Physics I always felt I was bringing up the rear. It didn’t help that I was sat next to a young boy who ended up lecturing the subject in one of the cloistered establishments down south. I felt inferior, inadequate, thick, stupid and simply blamed it on Mr drunken milkman.

Looking back now, it’s clear to me where the blame lies for my abject failure in Physics. To be clear I never once saw him drink from a milk bottle. 

I know the reason and find it quite frustrating when reading, multiple times, the first sentence of this entry as I still cannot understand a single thing they are saying. It is a constant frustration given I know, I absolutely know, that science is cool and that the work a lot of them are doing is unbelievably interesting. 

Understanding it first however is an important prerequisite to getting a job in a scientific discipline and I always fall at this early hurdle. I probably need to know what a massive elementary particle is first I think. I am assuming here that ‘massive’ is a relative adjective, given the use of particle after it. This, I think you will agree, is a problem, is the Higgs Bosun massive? Like Elephant massive? Or simply massive relative to other particles which are smaller than, well, everything?

The folks not far from here at CERN buried under Geneva are pushing the boundaries of science, finding shit out about stuff which mankind has been searching for years. Take the search for the illustrious God Particle (aka the Higgs bosun), I have absolutely no idea or even the slightest inkling or what it might be or look like but with a name like that…….come on, who doesn’t want to search for it? 

Even Indiana Jones would be tempted.

I just glaze over, ignorant from it all. I try to understand, I really do, but just cant. It’s like someone has built a heavy lead door between me and this knowledge.

Nowadays science is cool, it gets headlines in the papers and the men at the forefront of it aren’t the bearded, wooly jumper types of old, no they are young and good-looking. They like the things I do, football, women, drinking, outdoor stuff but they have the added cool factor of being at the diamond tipped cutting edge of knowledge creation. Had I known what I know now it would have been a close call between football player, rock star or particle physicist as my preferred career choices.

In short, they don’t learn stuff from others, they discover stuff. Going boldly where no man has gone before and I for one am insanely jealous of them.

Every morning I sit at my desk, turn on my computer with a mouthful of croissant and a cup of coffee. I check my agenda for the day and start dealing with mundane emails about mundane things.

They sit at their desks with a mouthful of croissant and coffee and wonder what particle, bosun or space worm hole they will discover today. They get to name stuff, important things like the building blocks of everything we know and can touch – they name the universe.

As I am wondering how to right align all my bullet points on a PowerPoint presentation they are discovering what black holes are made of. I am talking about financial statements and they are figuring out how the big bang happened.

A good proportion of the population believe in creation. They believe that god created everything and put man, in his image, on earth. Everything happens for a reason, normally because god wills it. This is simple and a nice story. I actually wish I had the faith to believe in something so simple and which helps explain everything which happens to me and to the people around me.

Science does not proclaim to have the ultimate answer and I like this. Its much more believable. For every theory developed another one comes along to try to prove it wrong. Its like a welcome competition, an evolving belief system to find the truth. 

Perhaps, ironically, at some point in the future it will become a new religion in itself.

I believe that anything which challenges the existent beliefs or thinking of its time has to be a good thing. Rock and roll did it, moving pictures did it, archeology has done it, the railways did it, Darwin certainly did it and science has always been doing it, it just seems to me to be doing it a lot more now. Or at least the people doing it look better.

Is science the new rock and roll?

Probably not but its not that far removed and looking back its close enough to wish I hadn’t giggled at my teachers drunken ramblings and took the time to work out what the little ç sign meant.

Then, and only then, would I even have stood a chance of understanding 'quantum chromodynamics' and maybe if I was really good I would be able to pronounce 'phenomenologist' correctly.