Ah, the God Particle. There are two important things to consider here. Remember this search resulted in the propagation of ultra-paranoid conspiracy theories that the activation of the Large Hadron Collider would somehow manufacture mini black holes and the Earth split apart or be devoured. The point being: another theory of fear-based projection bites the dust. Second, there is no religious implication to the naming of this enigmatic subatomic thingamabob. The actual name comes from a proposed title for a book by Leon Lederman, who suggested the particle should be called the “god damn particle” because no one can find the gd thing. Publishers rejected his offensive title and soon thereafter, the media grabbed onto the God Particle label and ran with it. Physicists, including Higgs - a devout atheist - despise the moniker. So as physicists search for the how and why of the Big Bang, no surge in religious enthusiasm should be construed to be accompanying this discovery nor for any of the subsequent revelations. After all, the fact that the big bang took place whatever conjectured millions, billions, trillions of years ago remains inconvenient to the Biblical assessments of the age of Creation.— Philip Sedgwic, Celestial Cattywumpus ~ 5 July 2012 newsletter
An image of what is likely the Higgs boson, or God particle, evidenced by electron decay inside the Large Hadron Collider's ATLAS experiment, observed in May 2012
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