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Culture, history and society

Culture, history and society

Home » Culture, history and society » What physics metaphor do you think needs to be experimentally verified?

What physics metaphor do you think needs to be experimentally verified?

16 Dec 2024 Robert P Crease

We’ve all heard of the “cocktail party” Higgs-boson metaphor. But what would happen, wonders Robert P Crease, if it were truly put to the test?

Cartoon of someone alone in a crowded space
From idea to reality People crowding around a celebrity entering a room was said by Peter Higgs himself to be the best metaphor to describe how particles acquire mass, but in practice a crowd often stands back at an awed distance. (Courtesy: Shutterstock AI)
A few months ago, I received an e-mail from Mike Wilson, a professor of mathematics at the Universit

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Robert P Crease is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, US and writes the monthly Critical Point column for Physics World, robertpcrease.com, e-mail robert.crease@stonybrook.edu. His latest book is The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory
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