Higgs bosons play no role in daily life, and they haven’t done anything of interest since the early moments of the universe.
Matt Strassler, Waves in an Impossible Sea
I got home late because my train was held up–as usual–by a signal problem at South Station. Or an incoming Amtrak train that had the right of way. Or a passenger having a heart attack at the Auburndale stop. As the saying goes, it’s always something, at least with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
I opened the door to a familiar sound: manic chuckling coming from the living room, where my Higgs boson particle was playing video games. It’s sad, really, to watch his generation just–give up.
I remember when the Higgs bosons first burst on the scene. Everyone thought they would reveal the deepest secrets of the universe. Instead, they are the biggest disappointment of all the elementary particles in the universe.
They’re like the high school quarterback who ends up pumping gas, or the homecoming queen who’s waiting tables at a restaurant, instead of being the hostess. You can see the pain, the regret in their eyes. Higgs bosons, by contrast with human failures, don’t give a good god damn how they ended up.
“What’s up?” I say as I enter the room, forgetting that my Higgs boson has his headphones on. I move between him and the TV screen and scream: “WHAT’S UP?”
“Oh, hi dad,” he says, bobbing his head like a boxer to see around me.
“HOW’S IT GOING?”
“Pretty good, I just made it to the tenth level of Warlords of Seattle–and I’ve got a shot at making it to the eleventh if you’ll just . . . get out of the way.”
The indifference, the insouciance, makes my blood boil. Enough is enough, so I turn off the television and rip his headphones off.
“Hey–what gives?”
“I give apparently. I give you a good home, a good education, all the opportunities that neutrinos and anti-neutrinos on the other side of the universe don’t have, and you turn out to be nothing.”
“Hey, maybe I haven’t done much with my life so far, but I imply the existence of the Higgs field–so back off.”
“Sorry, the Higgs field has been a cosmic presence since the universe was born. You can’t take credit for it, and you literally haven’t done anything of interest since then.”
“I was National Honor Society in high school.”
“Oh, whoop-de-doo. They hand that out like penny candy.”
He puts down his game controller, and looks up at me mulishly. “There are no jobs out there.”
“Yes there are, if you’re willing to start out at the bottom. Nobody starts out as War Lord. You may have to get an unpaid internship, then get hired in the War Lord mail room, and work your way up gradually.”
“I don’t have the energy for that.”
“Well, if you got a little exercise you would. You’re starting to get a pot belly.”
“Shows how much you know, Mr. Wizard.”
“What?”
“The Higgs field–the substance that fills the universe–is like a soup. It adds mass to objects as they pass through it. So the more exercise I get, the more massive I’d become. I’m better off staying right here where mass can’t get at me.”
Kids. What do they know? You can’t tell them anything.
“You’re already a massive scalar boson,” I say. “Zero spin, no electric charge. You’ve got to go out and create opportunities for yourself, otherwise you’ll decay into other particles. You want to end up as a fermion? A lepton?” I pause for effect: “A gluon?”
He twists his mouth into a little dishrag of defiance. “I’m fine,” he says mulishly.
“Well, I’m not fine with you being fine. Starting tomorrow–bright and early–I want you out of the house, pounding the pavement. I want you to apply for five jobs, every day. I don’t care what kind. I’m not asking you to take a nonzero value everywhere. I’m asking you to be a nonzero somewhere–anywhere.”
He scratches his ear with affected indifference, but I’ve set the bar so low he can hardly object.
“Anything else?” he asks.
“I want you to start pulling your own weight around here. I’m going to start billing you for your share of food and utilities–including the cable bill.” That brings him out of his slouch, like Stan Musial ripping a single to right field.
“Okay,” he says finally, after a pregnant pause that lasted slightly longer than the normal gestation period. “If you’re done?”
“Yes?”
“Could you give me some money for gas, me and the other particles are going to take a spin around the Large Hadron Collider.”