TO CALL the Higgs boson the "God particle" is to invite the wrath of many a physicist. Religious objections aside, it overstates the case. The Higgs merely explains why other particles have mass – and even then it is only part of the story. It also obscures the origins of the term. Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, who led the charge to find the Higgs at Fermilab's particle accelerator and wrote a book about his search, wanted to call it "that goddamn particle". His publisher shortened it.
Now we have an entity that seems more befitting of the title: the omniscient, omnipresent and unseen "u-bit" (see "From i to u: Searching for the quantum master bit"). Some will pounce on the fact that science needs such an entity to explain the universe. But the existence of a u-bit would be no more profound than the existence of natural laws. Let's leave God out of it this time.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Not the God particle"
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