Visit from the Higgs
by Flip Tanedo (during a long post-dinner research break)
With apologies to Clement Moore, author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” aka “[Twas] The Night Before Christmas”. These verses contain little/no scientific content (no rumors, just rhymes) and are here just for some timely holiday silliness. For those who are confused about what’s going on, see Aidan’s liveblog.
‘Twas the night before Higgsmas, when all through the lab,
not a student was stirring—except some undergrad.
The data were analyzed with lots of great care
in hopes that the Higgs boson soon would be there.
The press corps were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of exclusion plots danced in their heads.
And theorists in the US, Asia, and Europe
dug up the models that they were so sure of.
When out from Geneve there arose such a clatter,
We sprung from our desks to see what was the matter.
Away to the webcast—I must install Flash,
Reloaded the webpage, I hope it didn’t crash.
The introduction recapped the latest CERN run,
and gave the impression of more fun to come.
When, what to my wondering eyes should I see,
but a miniature bump… in Higgs to ZZ?
And with all of the press and media bigwigs
I knew in a moment that it must be the Higgs.
From ATLAS and CMS the results were the same,
and we whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
Now Higgs! Now Englert! Now Guralnik and Hagen!
On Kibble! On Brout! On, Goldstone and Anderson!
To Stockholm in December, the Nobel prize,
But a prize that only three could realize.
We wondered about the “look elsewhere effect,”
But somewhere, someone just won their Higgs bet.
Not so fast, of course, it was only three sigma.
That’s okay—it could be a ‘discovery’ by summer.
Not so fine tuned, in fact still quite natural,
in spite of electroweak precision observables,
at least in the supersymmetric Standard Model.
There’s room for new physics, we can be hopeful!
The Higgs mass? A hint? A whisper, a whim?
Theory papers will fill arXiv up to its brim.
And with a white Santa-like beard, who is this?
Oh my, straight from CERN-TH—it’s really John Ellis!
His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples—how merry!
He spoke many great things about supersymmetry.
I tried to refrain myself from asking if he knew
That he was still off by a factor of two.
But I really shouldn’t write that here on this blog
For soon I’ll be applying to be a postdoc.
I digress. The matter we should focus on
is what’s next in the search for the Higgs boson.
It is now up to ATLAS and CMS
To combine their data in a way that makes sense.
In maybe a month, maybe early next year,
We will have new significances to hear.
We gave up our breaks and went straight to our work,
Life as a grad student! But it sure has its perks.
What’s more exciting than the science frontier?
And by reading this blog, you can also be there!
We sprang to our desks, we downed our espressos,
All in the search for what new physics might show.
And John Ellis exclaimed, to the OPERA bambinos,
“Happy Higgsmas to all, and forget those neutrinos”.
Like!
best poem i’ve heard in my life
Nice,Exiting times for higgs hunters !!! May the higgs be with you !
Higgs Boson
(with apologies to A. A. Milne)
I found a little boson, so that boson was his name,
And I called him Higgs Boson and he answered just the same.
I put him in a matchbox, and I kept him all the day…
And Nanny let my boson out
Yes, Nanny let my boson out
She went and let my boson out-
And boson ran away.
She said she didn’t mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches, and she just took off the lid
She said that she was sorry, but it’s difficult to catch
An excited sort of boson you’ve mistaken for a match.
She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn’t mind
As there’s lots and lots of bosons which she’s certain we could find
If we looked about the garden for the holes where bosons hid-
And we’d get another matchbox, and write BOSON on the lid.
We went to all the places which a boson might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a boson likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
“A Large Hadron Collider and Higgs Boson coming out!”
It was the Higgs Boson I’m as certain as can be
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it might be ME,
And he had a kind of look as if he thought he ought to say:
“I’m very, very sorry that I tried to run away.”
And Nanny’s very sorry too, for you know what she did,
And she’s writing HIGGS BOSON very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and me are friends, because it’s difficult to catch
An excited Higgs Boson you’ve mistaken for a match.
What does Ellis have to do with any of this?
Hi CERN-Joe: short answer: absolutely nothing. (He had nothing to do with this travesty!) The tongue-in-cheek reference is that he’s a senior figure at CERN who bears more than a passing resemblance to Santa Claus. (He’s a regular in the CERN-TH Christmas plays, so I assume he doesn’t mind some silly ribbing.)
LOVE IT!!!
Best poem in all my life. “Happy Higgsmas to all, and forget those neutrinos” – classic
FLIP!! Great work! How are you? We miss you at Stanford and hope you come back here to do a postdoc. Elva says “Hi!” as well. Have a Merry Christmas!!
It is about time you edited Wikipedia article on unsolved problems in physics.
Lots of inaccuracies. Also, a place for self-presentation by backlinking to your blog!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics
P.S. The poem on the creation of the internet, now included in the RFC “standards” seems to me still a bit more potent. But yay, this is the first quantum-mechanical poem since the George Gamow stories!
BTW, don’t you want to continue that story? It would be amazing, you’re a good writer. How the cleck met the maker of large particles (protons, neutrons), he was doubtful of the neutrinos. “He shook the box labeled ‘neutrinos’ and asked: “is there anything?” The old man replied: “I don’t know, but my friends theoretical physicist claim there is.”