The naming of this most mysterious particle carries the resentment of many American physicists. The truth behind it is...

Nobel Prize winner and British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs died on April 8, 2024 at the age of 94. His most famous achievement in his life was the prediction of a crucial particle and its mechanism in the standard model of theoretical physics .

Image source: University of Edinburgh official website

It was for this contribution that he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013. This particle is called the Higgs boson in physics, but it has a much more famous nickname in the popular media - the " God particle ".

How can this particle be called "God"? Does it mean that it is "created by God" or that its status in physics is equivalent to that of "God"?

Neither. In fact, it has nothing to do with God, either literally or figuratively. There are many bad names in the scientific community, but if scientists were asked to vote for the worst noun, the name "God particle" would probably win first place.

Why does the scientific community dislike the name " God particle "?

The name "God Particle" first appeared in the popular science book "The God Particle" by physicist Leon Lederman.

However, he said in the book that this name was not his original intention. He originally wanted to call it the "goddamn" particle because it caused great trouble for physicists . However, because the publisher strongly opposed it and asked to shorten it to the "god" particle, he had no choice but to agree.

He did offer an explanation for the new name: There is a myth in Chapter 11 of the Old Testament Genesis that says that originally all human beings had a common language, but later humans wanted to build a tower to the sky, which angered God, so God confused their language and made it impossible for humans to communicate with each other. This is the myth of the Tower of Babel (Babel means "chaos" or "confusion").

Lederman said that the Higgs particle might be a confusing thing created by God. He even imitated this myth in his book and applied it to the Higgs particle, comparing the collider to the modern Tower of Babel leading to the mysteries of the universe.

This explanation is obviously a far-fetched remedy. In religious mythology, God has done so many things. Besides, if we must use this allusion, it would be more appropriate to call it "Babel particle". But in short, he called it that. The name became popular.

In the scientific community, few people like the name of the God particle. Although it is not uncommon to give exaggerated names in science, this name is not only ridiculously exaggerated, but also exaggerated in the wrong direction. The Higgs boson certainly has nothing to do with the gods in any religion, but it cannot solve all the problems in theoretical physics, and it does not even have much to do with the fundamental origin of the universe. In short, it has nothing to do with God in every sense.

Higgs himself was an atheist and disliked the name, thinking it might offend others. Physicists who study the Higgs boson were also largely unanimous in their opposition to the name. Physicists have repeatedly proposed a new name, but the name was originally used by the mass media rather than within the physics community , so these suggestions fell on deaf ears.

So who is to blame? Some people put the blame on the publisher, saying that this bad name has nothing to do with the physicist. But in fact, considering the historical context at the time, Lederman almost certainly had a motive when he agreed to adopt this name.

Background of the birth of the book "God Particle"

The book "The God Particle" not only popularized the Higgs boson, which had not been discovered at the time, but also highly praised the role of particle accelerators in basic physics. The accelerator that Lederman himself strongly promoted, the Superconducting Super Collider, was facing a "life and death crisis" that year.

Lederman photographed at Fermilab. Image source: public domain

Lederman was the second director of Fermilab at the time. His predecessor was physicist Robert Wilson, who had been questioned by the Atomic Commission when he was seeking funding for the lab to build a particle accelerator.

When a congressman asked him "Is there any connection between this accelerator and national security?", Wilson left a famous answer: " It has no direct relationship with defending the country, except making the country more worth defending. " This sentence boosted the morale of the physics community at the time, and the inquiry was successfully passed. On October 3, 1969, the accelerator started construction, and Wilson personally shoveled the first shovel of soil.

However, that was a thing of the past. Wilson himself had resigned in 1978 in protest of funding cuts. Lederman then took over the laboratory. He tried his best to upgrade the original accelerator to 1 MeV (hence the name changed to MeV accelerator), but to make further breakthroughs, a new accelerator had to be built from scratch.

In 1984, the ambitious Superconducting Super Collider was launched under the strong push of Lederman. It was expected to be 87 kilometers long and reach an ultra-high energy of 40 mega-electron volts. If the Higgs boson exists, this collider will almost certainly find it.

The year is 1993. The Superconducting Super Collider is still just a 22-kilometer tunnel in the Texas wilderness, but $2 billion has already been spent. By then, the Soviet Union had collapsed, Congress had lost the Cold War spur, the government debt had exceeded $200 billion, and the new president, Clinton, was not very enthusiastic about the project launched by his predecessor.

Scientists in other fields have also raised questions. Another important project, the International Space Station, is also seriously overspent. It seems that only one can be chosen. The Europeans' funds are reserved for their own Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In addition, at the US-Japan trade summit, which was originally scheduled to discuss cooperation on the funding of the superconducting super collider, Bush suddenly developed gastroenteritis, vomited on the clothes of Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and fainted on the spot, and subsequent discussions were forced to be cancelled.

Lederman's book "The God Particle" was born in this context. He hoped that this book would arouse the public's attention to the field of high-energy physics - perhaps it could influence congressional policy and save his hard work. The original name "The Particle of God's Wrath" was also a very "clickbait" name. Although it was greatly exaggerated to change it to "The God Particle", it probably did not violate Lederman's original intention .

However, he failed.

In March of the same year the book was published, the New York Times reported that the estimated cost of the accelerator had grown to $8 billion. In June, a report released by a nonprofit organization found that there were serious mismanagement issues with the collider funding. On October 19, the House of Representatives rejected further funding. On the 30th, the president signed a bill to cancel the project.

In Europe, the Large Hadron Collider started construction in 1998 and was completed in 2008. It discovered the Higgs boson in 2012 with one-sixth the energy of the superconducting super collider. The Fermilab accelerator built by Wilson stopped operating in 2011 for various reasons. Today, the only particle accelerator still in operation in the United States is the relativistic heavy ion accelerator in Bloomhaven, New York. At present, no collider in the world can reach the energy level planned for the superconducting super collider.

In this sense, it can be said that the naming of the God particle is not accidental. This name is destined to be very bad, because it carries the resentment of many American particle physicists. The Tower of Babel that Lederman dreamed of still collapsed, and the United States finally chose to abandon the super collider, but does this mean that the limited funds are invested in areas with more output, or does it mean that the discovery that could have changed the world has died? This question can only be answered by time.

Planning and production

Author: Fan Gang, a popular science author

Review | Zhou Xiaoliang, Senior Engineer of Physics Laboratory, Beijing Jiaotong University

Planning丨Xu Lai

Editor: Yinuo

Proofreading: Xu Lai, Lin Lin