The Higgs boson is often referred to as the "God particle" by individuals
outside the scientific community, from the title of a 1993 book on the Higgs
boson and particle physics by Nobel Physics prizewinner and Fermilab director
Leon Lederman. The book was written in the context of failing US government
support for the Superconducting Super Collider, a part-constructed titanic
competitor to the Large Hadron Collider with planned collision energies of 2 ×
20 TeV that was championed by Lederman since its 1983 inception and shut down in
1993; the book sought in part to promote awareness of the significance and need
for such a project in the face of its possible loss of funding.
While media use of this term may have contributed to wider awareness and in-
terest, many scientists feel the name is inappropriate since it is sensational
hyperbole and misleads readers; the particle also has nothing to do with God,
leaves open numerous questions in fundamental physics, and does not explain the
ultimate origin of the universe. Higgs, an atheist, was reported to be dis-
pleased and stated in a 2008 interview that he found it "embarrassing" because
it was "the kind of misuse... which I think might offend some people".
Science writer Ian Sample stated in his 2010 book on the search that the nick-
name is "universally hate[d]" by physicists and perhaps the "worst derided" in
the history of physics, but that (according to Lederman) the publisher rejected
all titles mentioning "Higgs" as unimaginative and too unknown.
Lederman explains his choice with a review of the long human search for know-
ledge, using an analogy between the impact of the Higgs field on the fundamental
symmetries at the Big Bang, and the apparent chaos of structures, particles,
forces and interactions that resulted and shaped our present universe, with the
biblical story of Babel in which the primordial single language of early Genesis
was fragmented into many disparate languages and cultures.
Today ... we have the standard model, which reduces all of reality to a dozen
or so particles and four forces. ... It's a hard-won simplicity [...and...]
remarkably accurate. But it is also incomplete and, in fact, internally incon-
sistent... This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to
our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have
given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the
publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a
more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is caus-
ing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older
one...
—Leon M. Lederman and Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe is the
Answer, What is the Question p. 22
Lederman whimsically asks whether the Higgs boson was added just to perplex
and confound those seeking knowledge of the universe, and whether physicists
will be confounded by it as recounted in that story, or ultimately surmount the
challenge and understand "how beautiful is the universe [God has] made".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson
