Strolling downtown and thoroughly – and finally – enjoying the sunshine, I noticed Big Mike reading our daily newspaper.
Hmm, I thought, that’s a good way to promote the paper…and then Big Logger Mike opened his yap after spying me trying sneak by his spar pole.
“Hey What’s-Yer-Name, what’s all the hoopla over finding this stupid Dog Particle? I find them all the time on my little patch of lawn ‘thanks’ to them dog walkers!” he bellowed.
Oh my, our yellow stalwart who sees and hears all is getting old and now he’s suffering from dyslexia. I tried straightening him out.
“It’s not a Dog Particle…” I explained before he abruptly cut me off.
“Geez, those scientists sure can spend our money fast,” he lectured. “Billions of dollars to build some dang tunnel in Switzerland so they can crash fleas into each other at a zillion miles an hour…and what do they find: Dog particles, which I think is just a fancy way of saying ‘poop’!”
I quietly groaned and then looked around to make sure no one else was there to hear me yell, “It’s the GOD PARTICLE for crying out loud!”
Big Mike gave me a funny look.
“Which part?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “I think if I was God, I’d be pretty ticked off if a bunch of pocket-protecting wearing geeks were trying to pull particles out of me.”
This wasn’t going to be easy.
“Let me try to explain. They think they’ve found the finite remnants of a particle which provides the key link between energy and the creation of mass. It’s the link to the beginnings of our entire universe,” I said, trying to make quantum physics sound simple in under 50 words.
It didn’t help. In fact, he appeared more dubious than ever.
“What do you mean exactly when you say, ‘think they’ve found’?” he asked, again with the raised eyebrow.
“Well,” I began, knowing full well that he wasn’t going be impressed, “they haven’t really found the God Particle – no one can even see it with the most powerful microscope – but they believe they’ve proved the theory.”
Big Logger Mike just shook his head, sadly, as I expected.
“Nice words: think, believe, theory,” he said with an air of authority. “What you’re really saying is they don’t know for sure, but they think they think they know, right?”
Now he had me confused.
“I guess so,” I meekly replied.
“Okay, I’ll take your word just this once,” he said. “Just tell me one thing, how’s this God Particle going to help the planet?”
And now he had me stumped.
“Umm, they don’t know or at least no one’s said what it can do,” I said with a shrug.
“Just what I suspected,” said Big Logger Mike, “another so-called discovery so they can ask for billions and billions more, so that more scientists can have jobs. I think we need a Dog Particle collider right here in Campbell River!”
