The Higgs Boson is here…The Higgs Boson is here!!!

Well, almost…

This WSJ article Gives a good overview of the narrowing of the search to a mass around 125 Giga electron volts (GeV).

The significance of the Higgs is that Quantum theory ascribes it as the arbiter of whether a particle has mass or not, and how much.

Worries that the pursuit of the Higgs might create a black hole that would swallow up the earth, are good fodder for SyFy Saturday movies, but are impossible in real life…Such a black hole would have the mass on the order of the Higgs, and would travel around for the remaining life of the universe before it swallowed enough additional mass to be in any way worrisome… Sort of like the odds that all the air molecules would all rush to a corner of the room and leave the occupants to suffocate. A finite probability, but not one to lie awake worrying about 😉