And now for something quite interesting.

[Ian Shlasko]

Well, that about wraps it up for Earth... As soon as they manage to calculate the mass of the Higgs Boson particle, their super-colliders will reach critical mass, causing an implosion that collapses the entire planet to the size of a pea. At least, that's what I learned from Lexx :)

Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of the Guardians Saga (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels)

[TPFKAPB]

:thumbsup: Some of the comments at the bottom make my head hurt. "Or... the Higgs doesn't exist and mass is a function of the vacuum interaction of matter particles, and the "footprint" of the Higgs is actually a shadow of the quantum vacuum. Wouldn't this also be consistent with the fact that non-matter particles have properties of mass yet are for all intents and purposes, massless? What other explanation could account for both phenomenon?"

[hairy_hats]

Are you kidding? Sometimes they have Turing Cake[^] !

[hairy_hats]

What are "non-matter particles"?

[Ian Shlasko]

viaducting wrote:

What are "non-matter particles"?

Small things nobody cares about. (That's what she said!) And in case that unintentionally sounded hostile... It's a joke... "non-matter"... As in they don't matter... Just shut up and laugh :)

Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of the Guardians Saga (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels)

[lewax00]

Photons and neutrinos come to mind. Basically everything that isn't part of matter (like quarks and electrons) and in this case probably also not antimatter.

[NormDroid]

You may as well pull your pants down now and kiss your ass goodbye.

Software Kinetics Wear a hard hat it's under construction
Metro RSS

[Ian Shlasko]

Wouldn't want to prematurely traumatize my coworkers :)

Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in?
Author of the Guardians Saga (Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels)

[wizardzz]

Out of all sites, this is blocked by net nanny!

[AspDotNetDev]

Some say the collider may cause a black hole, but I am not conCERNed.

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

[Andy Brummer]

bosons. Fermions are matter particles because you can't have 2 of them at the same place and the same time.

Curvature of the Mind now with 3D

[bVagadishnu]

Ian Shlasko wrote:

Well, that about wraps it up for Earth...

Sounds eerily similar toThe Nine Billion Names of God[^]

Schenectady? What am I doing in Schenectady?

[xExTxCx]

I'm really interested to see if they have something this time.

[Slacker007]

I saw this as well, this morning. Interesting and boring, all at the same time.

"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012)

[Chris Maunder]

Neutrinos are matter.

cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP

[Chris Maunder]

I'm sure they say that about your work, too. Except they probably leave out "interesting". ;)

cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP

[lewax00]

Apparently by some definitions they are. I didn't know that (I also though they were mass-less, but that seems to have been disproven). I also didn't realized there wasn't a consensus on the definition of matter. (I had always heard "has mass and occupies space", but apparently not everyone agrees on that one.) :thumbsup:

[Slacker007]

Chris Maunder wrote:

I'm sure they say that about your work, too. Except they probably leave out "interesting".

Are you joking or are you being serious with your reply?

"the meat from that butcher is just the dogs danglies, absolutely amazing cuts of beef." - DaveAuld (2011)
"No, that is just the earthly manifestation of the Great God Retardon." - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "It is the celestial scrotum of good luck!" - Nagy Vilmos (2011) "But you probably have the smoothest scrotum of any grown man" - Pete O'Hanlon (2012)

[Chris Maunder]

For the sake of putting your mind at ease: both. The discovery of the Higgs Boson is one of the most incredible and fundamental discoveries man can make. The discovery confirms the Standard Model and explains why particles have mass. It's taken the resources beyond imagining to get where they are today and to be this close to an announcement of its discovery is unreal. The scientists who work on this stuff are working on the fundamental truths of the Universe, the very makeup of our existence. It's called the God Particle for a very good reason and to them, and many others, symbolises the pinnacle of scientific discovery and achievement. We, on the other hand, write code. We sometimes even write great code and can do some very cool and interesting stuff with our art. My comment, though, was a wry statement on what a particle physicist, working at CERN, would think about what us mere mortals do. How could anything else compare to discovering the particle the imbues elementary particles with mass? Your yard stick for measuring things as "interesting" would be a little skewed. On a personal level I also think calling an achievement like this as "boring" is lacking in respect and understanding for what they do. I am guessing your comment was flippant, but I do have enormous, unbounded respect for these guys so I felt it worth making a flippant reply in turn mirroring what I'm guessing they feel about the rest of the world right now.

cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP

[Gary R Wheeler]

That's what you get when you hear a manager say they care.

Software Zen: delete this;