Why Were So Many "Crazy" Higgs Boson Stories Published? 291
The presumed discovery of the Higgs boson may be one of the most important scientific discoveries ever, but it did bring out quite a bit of "strange" science reporting. In addition to blogs, many mainstream news sites jumped on the crazy headline bandwagon. The ability to soon travel at the speed of light, the building of a Star Trek style transporter, and many stories of the particle proving God doesn't exist have made the rounds in the past week. Is the particle's discovery just on the fringe of common scientific knowledge and therefore prone to wild speculation, or does this all come down to having the most sensational headline?
Where were they? (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't see any articles like that, are you confusing random small blogs for mainstream news sites? Or was this an American news thing?
Re:I'm postponing buying toothpaste (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone with a lot of dental problems.. so much this.
I mean there is a lot of advancements in the dental industry.. composite fillings, implants, etc.. but some stuff is just conspicuously primitive. Maybe there really is no better way than physically scraping the junk off with metal picks.. or maybe it's impractical for whatever reason.
Personally I'd like to see one of these nifty painless numbing methods I've been hearing about as "just around the corner" since I was in high school to actually show up at my dentists office. Metal picks I don't mind.. my dentist trying to directly freeze my brain stem or something with a needle the size of a drinking straw and then STILL feeling it kinda gets on the nerves..
Somewhat Boring: Our model predicted it correctly (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, what was found is a particle with the same MASS as that predicted by the standard model. They haven't yet confirmed spin or other properties. But what this amounts to is confirmation of what was already suspected. Unfortunately, this isn't all that helpful, because we already know that the standard model doesn't predict everything correctly. If we hadn't found the Higgs Boson, then perhaps it would have helped us to fix the standard model. As it is, this can't help us improve the standard model. In other words, this is great, and it's nice to know that brilliant scientists in the past century were right, but it isn't any kind of revolutionary progress.