--- On Tue, 10/13/09, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have
> suggested that
> the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to
> produce with the
> collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation
> would ripple
> backward through time and stop the collider before it could
> make one,
> like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his
> grandfather."
Unfalsifiability. We have gone from a science, to a religion.
DATELINE...
VOICEOVER: "Thousands of believers and pilgrims have come to Geneva today,
seeking spiritual guidance from the so-called Higgs boson, a theorized but
unproven mediator of mass. Though some are calling it a pilgrimage for nothing."
<Chants of people shouting praises to the Higgs, hands uplifted, some clapping
and holding hands>
REPORTER: "This man..."
<a middle aged man appears, captioned "This Man"
REPORTER: "...has joined a rapidly growing religious movement centered at the
LHC, which adherents to this religion, known as Higgslam, hold to be holy
ground."
THIS MAN: "You see, we must pray daily to the Higgs. We must face east, in the
direction of this holy land, when we pray. The Muslims have their Mecca. We
have our Meson. We must make a pilgrimage to it. There is only one Higgs, and
Leon Lederman is his prophet."
<cue a view of televangelists capering and gambolling across a stage, with
hundreds of followers collapsing onto the floor, violently spasming>
VOICEOVER: "Here at Trinity Broadcasting Network, the famous and sometimes
infamous evangelical Christian media outlet, the Higgs particle with its
time-defying nature has been hailed as a direct connection to their other two
deities of choice, God and his sidekick, the Almighty Dollar."
<cue random televangelist and wife with ridiculous amount of makeup and
enormous hair>
TELEVANGELIST: "You see, the Higgs has no beginning and no end. It has
time-altering properties, just as our God does. It is the alpha and the omega."
<cue more pentecostal bedlam>
REPORTER: "Two powerful Dons of the Christian Mafia, Kenneth Copeland and Paul
Crouch, further embrace this. Behind me, you can see hundreds of followers
collapsing the the ground in what is now being termed, Slain in the
Synchrotron. Their newest program, the COLLIDER'S VOICE OF VICTORY, seeks to
latch on to this new blending of faith and particle physics."
EVANGELIST, screaming to crowd: "Let us sing praise to electrical charge and
COLOR! For now, brothers, now is the time when there will be those who will
tempt us down dark paths. But these are the works of the DEVIL! Beware the
beast, the ANTIPARTICLE, whose mass is six hundred and sixty six MeV/c^2!!!"
REPORTER: "And the fervor has gone both ways."
<cut back to the LHC, where a
stock-white-labcoated-glasses-wearing-balding-unkempt-beard-sporting-softspoken-yet-brighteyed-scientist-type
is walking and talking to a reporter>
CARDBOARD-CUTOUT-SCIENTIST: "Well, we've begun to feel that there should be a
blend of faith and physics. It helps us to reconcile hard facts that we don't
like to deal with, and to hold onto our deeply held beliefs. We've found, to
our amazement, that we hold much in common with the average believer."
REPORTER: "Professor, is it true you no longer call yourself a particle
physicist, but a 'scientific apologist?'"
C-C-S: "Absolutely. It is fitting, because, you see I was taught something by
the believers. I learned that we need not throw out our theories if they are
proven wrong. You see, the theory was never wrong, it was simply human
misinterpretation."
VOICEOVER: "He goes on to say, the influx of believers and pilgrims has proven
quite useful."
C-C-S: "Oh yes, absolutely. With all the new particles we are now theorizing,
we need a great deal of names. These fellows who speak in tongues are quite
adept at coming up with fanciful new particle names."
VOICEOVER: "But not all in the scientific community welcome this new change in
attitude. Noted scientist and author Richard Dawkins has recently published his
take on these matters in his newest book, "The Higgs Delusion," in which he
posits that a particle based only in faith, which cannot be detected, is merely
a delusion."
<LHC again in background, with a holy war raging between sects of
Supersymmetrical Baptists, Higgslamic Strong-Force Jihaddists and Electrically
Neutral Jews.>
REPORTER: "We close this report today with commentary by the world's foremost
authority on everything."
DR. STRANGELOVE: "Mein Fuhrer! I can WALK!"
Postmortem:
Er.
Postscript: Not trying to be sacrilegious, just revelling the the absurdity of
it all.
--Kyle
