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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

Every time I hear "God Particle" I want to cry. Please, please, media stop saying that. It's the perfect name to annoy scientists and people who are religious. It's a stupid name. The Higgs has nothing to do with God at all. There's no implication that the Higgs boson is anything more than yet-another-particle (albeit an important one).

Why won't people call it the Mass Particle instead?

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Seriously, what does it even mean!? What are they trying to convey by including "God" every time they mention it? That the theory was very important and hard to prove? In that case, might we be hearing about the "God string theory" or "God P=NP" next?

They might as well just call it the "Ketchup particle", and it would make just as much sense.

Lederman said he gave it the nickname "The God Particle" because the particle is "so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive," but jokingly added that a second reason was because "the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing."

From (with more): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#.22The_God_particle...

While mass is quite fundamental even to the general public I agree, "the god particle" is just silly.

Your answer to this question: Why won't people call it the Mass Particle instead? is in your post: It's the perfect name to annoy scientists and people who are religious.

Seriously, though, I think people are using it in the vernacular sense, like "God Mode" in video games, or Uber, or Mega or any of these superlative prefixes.

I say we change it back to the 'Goddamn Particle'

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