The champagne bottle boson
It's awfully difficult to write a popular article about physics, isn't it?
That isn't (much) snark. I'm serious. As a former (and wistful wannabe-again) science writer, I've always felt that biology always has, by its nature, something concrete into which one can sink one's expository grappling hooks. With chemistry, one can always talk about applications. And then there's physics.
Which is probably why I love it. And want to take a sec to give a shout-out to Brian Greene's latest -- it's terrific.
I'm not, mind you, claiming I understand this stuff. Some of what I love is the language used to approach the very, very abstract -- the neologisms, the unavoidable weirdness -- as well as the sense of primacy of the field's questions. The shivers I get from reading about string theory are the only way I can relate to the sense of mystery others report from the sight of liturgical vestments. Good science writing -- Greene's is; this NYT article unfortunately isn't -- wields metaphor like an endoscopic camera, offering us mediated access as our only hope of exploring the subject, but giving us strange and wonderful images in compensation.
I'm frustrated by the linked article, because it's a poor camera at a news event that's evidently very newsworthy indeed. We're told these data would point to a "new and unexpected version" of the Higgs boson. Really? And does that mean just that the writer understands that these data contradict the Standard Model Higgs, or, with hundreds of extant predictions about the nature of the Higgs out there, does this mean that this possible finding contravenes...all? some?...of them? We need a little more information here, Dennis.
Seriously, the article is practically pre-Onionized, giving well-worn context ("We had to let the whole world know about this!" / "It's probably just a statistical artifact"), without ever really giving us a good idea of what "it" is. Which is likely why the Times buried it in the Science section and didn't give the story the due that it (...I think?) deserves.
Anyway, I'm sure we'll be hearing more on this story in the coming months -- and you saw it flagged here first.
That isn't (much) snark. I'm serious. As a former (and wistful wannabe-again) science writer, I've always felt that biology always has, by its nature, something concrete into which one can sink one's expository grappling hooks. With chemistry, one can always talk about applications. And then there's physics.
Which is probably why I love it. And want to take a sec to give a shout-out to Brian Greene's latest -- it's terrific.
I'm not, mind you, claiming I understand this stuff. Some of what I love is the language used to approach the very, very abstract -- the neologisms, the unavoidable weirdness -- as well as the sense of primacy of the field's questions. The shivers I get from reading about string theory are the only way I can relate to the sense of mystery others report from the sight of liturgical vestments. Good science writing -- Greene's is; this NYT article unfortunately isn't -- wields metaphor like an endoscopic camera, offering us mediated access as our only hope of exploring the subject, but giving us strange and wonderful images in compensation.
I'm frustrated by the linked article, because it's a poor camera at a news event that's evidently very newsworthy indeed. We're told these data would point to a "new and unexpected version" of the Higgs boson. Really? And does that mean just that the writer understands that these data contradict the Standard Model Higgs, or, with hundreds of extant predictions about the nature of the Higgs out there, does this mean that this possible finding contravenes...all? some?...of them? We need a little more information here, Dennis.
Seriously, the article is practically pre-Onionized, giving well-worn context ("We had to let the whole world know about this!" / "It's probably just a statistical artifact"), without ever really giving us a good idea of what "it" is. Which is likely why the Times buried it in the Science section and didn't give the story the due that it (...I think?) deserves.
Anyway, I'm sure we'll be hearing more on this story in the coming months -- and you saw it flagged here first.
2 Comments:
-
Ryan S said...
-
- 1:18 PM
-
esquiver said...
-
- 4:56 PM
Post a CommentSaw Mr. Greene at the Schnitz a few weeks ago. Entertaining as always. A couple of the post-presentation questions were from 10-12 year old boys, one of which asked -- from memory -- "if there are an infinite number of universes, meaning that every possibility exists somewhere, what if someone in one universe created a bomb that destroyed all the other universes?"
And Mr. Greene said...?
The thing is, there is no "what if." It did happen, and it didn't. The real problem is linguistic, (what?) (you heard me.) and it's the use/mention one. We don't actually *use* the concept of infinity; we just think we do. I'm not entirely sure we *can*.
<< Home