The 4th of July, a day previously of little significance, may now be celebrated as ‘Higgs day’. Many Americans marked the discovery with fireworks and it’s nice to see such celebration of science. The discovery led to an amusing (to me, anyway) exchange on Twitter. Old tweets get lost, and the hashtag we used is already gone from Twitter search, so I am recording the conversation here.
It all started with @C_J_Smith‘s assertion:
We have a Higgs!
— Calvin James Smith (@C_J_Smith) July 4, 2012
Pedantically, I pointed out:
or, rather, two teams have independently discovered a new particle which behaves like a Higgs ;) Looks like a duck, etc.
— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) July 4, 2012
Of course Calvin knew this:
absolutely! We’ve a new boson – now to find out if it is a #Higgs (or a duck)!
— Calvin James Smith (@C_J_Smith) July 4, 2012
And this is when the fun started. A tweet from @MA1CAL started a new hashtag:
it is, however, unlikely to be a duck ;-) #vivaduckphysics
— MA1CAL (@MA1CAL) July 4, 2012
Being unfamiliar with duck physics, I asked the obvious question:
my physics is a little rusty; what does the standard model say about ducks? #vivaduckphysics
— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) July 4, 2012
@MA1CAL revealed that vast possibilities were offered by this exciting new research area:
precious little – although there is a penguin process #vivaduckphysics
— MA1CAL (@MA1CAL) July 4, 2012
I called for further collaborators:
Further research needed re how ducks decay in GeV collisions #vivaduckphysics
— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) July 4, 2012
In an example of multiple discovery (the usual way by which science progresses), one of the early key results in the field was developed independently by @lizmallard and @markdatko:
ducks are made of quacks?
— Liz Hanson (@lizmallard) July 4, 2012
one would expect decays to top quacks surely
— mark datko (@markdatko) July 4, 2012
@MA1CAL was optimistic about the potential:
this funding request is drafting itself! #vivaduckphysics
— MA1CAL (@MA1CAL) July 4, 2012
It is an important test of a new theory to see how well it fits with the predictions made by established models. An early result in duck physics, a hypothesis from @needmoreletters, had implications which challenged the standard model Higgs:
does the Higgs Boson weigh more than a duck, or have CERN detected a witch? #vivaduckphysics #notthatholygrail1
— alicia (@needmoreletters) July 4, 2012
Taking the only logical course of action, I suggested:
Burn it! #vivaduckphysics #notthatholygrail
— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) July 4, 2012
I also enquired of our newest duck physicist:
@needmoreletters who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science? #vivaduckphysics
— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) July 4, 2012
Discussion
So where does duck physics go from here? The field has been fairly quiet recently but I presume the main practitioners are hard at work on new theories. I hope this review article will encourage other researchers to enter the field. The potential for impact is clear:
so what does it say that the most retweets I’ve ever got was a joke combining Higgs Boson & Monty Python?
— alicia (@needmoreletters) July 4, 2012
1. Despite @needmoreletters‘s assertion of a “bad joke“, given the context I regard #notthatholygrail as some pretty inspired hashtagging.
The duck isn’t the holy grail, but it has a grail-shaped beak on.
Peter, I am grateful that you acknowledge my small contribution to the field of Duck Physics. (I am @lizmallard.) I have been making observations since, which may be of relevance, although they seem confusing to me, and I am hoping that others might help to clarify.
I have observed (at both the Llanelly Duck-and-Goose-Physics lab, and at the Slimbridge lab – both run by WWT) that ducks absorb grain. I have further observed that while absorbing grain, ducks emit quacks of lower energy, although other ducks, converging on the event, emit high-energy quacks, or even squarks (unconfirmed). I am also fairly sure that the ducks absorbing grain gain mass. So my question is, does the grain act as glue to hold in the high-energy quacks? Or, alternately, is the grain analagous to the Higgs particle in standard physics, enabling mass?
I hope that your correspondents may be able to cast light (or, for the ducks’ sake, grain) on this question. I have used up all my lab time. Good luck. Liz.