The confirmation of the existence of the Higgs Boson is
reminiscent of Alexander Graham Bell’s famous “Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to
see you.” The utterance on March l0,
1876 ushered in the age of modern telecommunications and it was a reference point at least once during the Golden Age of Television when programs like You Are There, hosted by Walter Cronkite, dramatized great moments
in history. We’ve come a long way baby, but Dieter Heuer, the director general
of CERN, was hard put to provide a useful answer when asked on CNN the other
day about what the discovery of the Higgs Boson will mean for the average Joe.
He made some general points about the discovery of the Boson having importance for
anyone who is interested in how the universe came to be, but it was hard to
surmise how the discovery of the Boson would fare when compared to that of the
phone. Take-out Chinese food and escort services are examples of two industries
that could not subsist without the phone, but it’s unclear what industries will
be improved or created by the Boson. Will the discovery of the mysterious
particle have an effect on equally mysterious financial instruments like
synthetic derivatives? In some way the discovery of the Higgs Boson, which has
represented an investment of billions of dollars in research funds, is too big
to be useful. As if to underscore this point, the Times’ Dennis Overbye repeated the same line in his coverage of
the event, “Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe,” 7/4/12)
as he did on 6/19/12, “New Data on Elusive Particle is Shrouded in Secrecy.”
Describing “a cosmic molasses” and the way it helps particles to get mass, he
compared it to the way “a bill going through congress attracts riders and
amendments, becoming ever more ponderous.” Only two words changed. In the
original piece he used “moving” instead of “going through congress” and “gains” rather than “attracts riders.” When people start
to repeat themselves, it usually means they have run out of things to say.
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