Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Higgs and Jesus?

I see a lot of garbage throughout the years on the web. This one is almost up there on the peak of such garbage, especially in terms of how much the writer is ignorant of what he is trying to use.

This writer somehow managed to make the connection between "the higgs may not be a particle" to Jesus. Along the way, he also managed to mangle elementary particle physics. But that's OK, because ".... We needn't be adept with the math to understand the basic theoretical concept that underlies this issue..."

I like his definition of a boson:

A boson is a particle defined in terms of its weight relative to other particles, and the strength and range of its nuclear force as it interacts with other particles, all of which are detectable only on the most powerful microscopic level.


Which means a photon and a phonon are not bosons because they have no "weight".

How do people who are ignorant of the basic understanding of these things somehow feel comfortable to reveal their ignorance and write such things in the open? Is it because they are confident that no one reading such drivel can actually spot such mistakes? Read the comments.

And people BUY garbage like this!

Zz.

3 comments:

Tometheus said...

I can almost see the train of logic.

Spin implies angular momentum, which implies (angular) inertia, which implies mass. Ergo spin implies mass. (Larger 'spin' must imply larger mass.) The label 'boson' is related to spin, therefore, 'boson' is talking about a particle's mass. QED

Sadly, I've seen many physics students who couldn't see the holes in that line of thought.

Anonymous said...

Zz:I'm not sure why you are attracted to reading and commenting on these types of articles. You are fully aware that science and spiritual faith are exclusive; the people who try to marry the two only do it to strengthen their beliefs in one (usually religious people try to prove God through science, or disprove science if it appears to disprove God).
As a "believer" and a scientist, I'd rather that science NOT prove God (even if it could) because then God would cease to be God. And you oughtn't be upset by any group-mention of spirituality and science -- you know what you believe and you believe what you know. Be understanding of others -- their faith is weak.

Anonymous said...

hmmm...the writer doesn't seem to be able to spell "Hubble."

I want to go and check out the crazies at www.superrelativity.org that one of the commentors mentioned.

ought to be good for some laughs.