Higgs Boson Jokes for the Discerning Physicist with a PowerPoint to Liven Up

• Forty-eight years and a couple billion dollars to dredge up the mass equivalent of a chocolate chip in a fondue field.

•  It's only a matter of time before Star Trek starts mentioning "Higgs Field Disruptor Drives" as a means of Faster-Than-Light travel, removing mass to propel a ship faster. That's … not so much a joke as a plea to Jonathan Frakes to avoid the issue.

• Apparently your mother's so fat because she's been eating raw Higgs in a blanket all these years.

•  The Higgs boson is a miniscule yet highly massive particle that is not a pregnant Snooki.

• Someone at CERN's going to win the Nobel for this, but if you ask anyone at Tevatron, they couldn't give two gigaelectronvolts.

Scientists May Announce Higgs Boson Discovery Today

What you'll need to know at the water cooler:


What is it?
A fundamental particle, in the same group as gluons (they hold together the quarks that make up protons and neutrons), gauge Bosons (they stick the protons and neutrons together), and the hypothetical graviton (which would be the reason gravity affects matter).

Why does it matter? The Higgs is modeled to be the thing which lends matter its mass, thus kind of getting everything else to gel together. Really, everything. And since the Standard Model works for pretty much everything else, not having the Higgs kind of ruins science. And the universe. We- we really kind of need this thing to work.

How does it do that thing it does? Apparently, and this is science, there is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together. Yes, I just quoted Star Wars. That's how awesome this is. Within the fabric of space is an all-permeating energy field, and the Higgs boson interacts with it in such a way that any particle acquires a modicum of mass. Because of gluons and the other bosons these masses are bound together, and because of the graviton they fall towards each other even over vast distances.

So science is complete now, right? No such luck. In fact, this announcement will probably only confirm the existence of a suspected Higgs particle around an expected mass range to within 99.99% certainty. So about a thousand times less certain than anything accepted as sure enough to go in a textbook. Then of course we have to figure out why gravity is so weak, what powers dark energy, and why every quantum is so full of solace for Daniel Craig.

Alternative God Particles

Trippy.

Media outlets have an unfortunate effect on the public perception of science every time they use the phrase "God Particle" to describe the Higgs boson. When results imply a lack of discovery, scientists are godless heathens full of hubris and contempt, worthy of scorn; when results might point towards a future discover–and let's be honest, those are the same results interpreted by someone who might just be a godless heathen too–anyone in the science community is generally embarrassed at how wildly hopeful the interpretation of those results are.

So here's a list of other subatomic particles we could start talking about as if they were important religious figures, and maybe take some of the heat off of poor little Higgs so maybe he'll come out of seclusion.

• Hermes - Tachyons travel faster than light. Tere's been a lot of talk about neutrinos doing that lately, but let's refer back to "scientists shake their heads in sadness at your conclusions" argument.

• The Zeus - Just the electron, but it sounds way cooler with a tiny lightning bolt and turning into a swan to bang women, right?

• The Confucius - Intrinsically important, yet stable, thoughtful, and upstanding. The neutron. 

• The Neitzsche - What we'll call the Higgs is it turns out it never existed.

Bonus:

•  I propose we call fission "Mosesing."

Also, for the record, all particles are Muhammad particles because we can't show you what they look like.