'God Particle' scientists win the Nobel Physics Prize

Higgs himself dislikes the term "God Particle" because he thought "it might offend people who are religious". (Wikipedia). Funny that the only people that seem to be offended by the term here are atheists.

Anyway, congratulations to Higgs, Englert and all the unnamed contributors to the project.

The theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles surely means that the mechanism hasn't discovered anything factual, it is only a theory that it can, but as it is physically impossible to actually identify such a particle, because we have not yet invented anything that makes actualy identification definite then it is only a theory that it can possibly exist.

I propose that they've got it all backwards.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the... Dog particle.

It is a shame that the highest achievements of science and reason are tainted by association with ancient superstition by calling the Higgs boson the 'God particle'.

Could you be any more combative? It's called the God particle because of its importance in helping to form a so called 'Theory of Everything' - combining the four fundamental forces into one. This is the holy grail of physics, and the name is consequently appropriate.

About 600 years ago in Europe we were burning anyone who had any sort of good ideas about science, and good grammar was regarded as witchcraft (lit. grammerie).

This is a rather simplistic view. While the Church did interfere with some specific scientific subjects, it was often those who were closely associated with religion that actually made the greatest discoveries - e.g. Newton, Darwin. And some of the conflicts didn't even have anything to do with religion. Galileo, for example, wasn't put under house arrest for espousing a heliocentric theory of the solar system. He was put under house arrest for mouthing off the Church.

Yeesh, just because they found a smaller particle that makes up small particles doesn't mean they're at the end. Obviously something smaller makes up this "god" particle and they'll have to take another many years or decades to figure that out.

More seriously though, we've barely graduated from crawling to our first baby steps in science. About 600 years ago in Europe we were burning anyone who had any sort of good ideas about science, and good grammar was regarded as witchcraft (lit. grammerie).

You expect them to decode the secrets of an event that happened 13.789 billion years ago? Please mate, just a hundred years ago scientists couldn't explain why bumblebees could fly, but they got there. Give them a little time.

OK. let's not worry about how the Universe was created, instead let's just worry about what our future generations are going to do when our sun burns out or becomes Supernova, or gets swallowed up by one of those black holes lurking out there, or if the Ferengis decide they need the Earth as collateral for some business deal with the Romulans ...

I wonder how creationists are going to incorporate this into their story of the origins of the universe? They did a great job of incorporating dinosaurs in the few-thousand year old history of this planet.

"after the Universe cooled after the Big Bang"

What was before the Big Bang?

This particle has nothing to do with 'God'. Its prediction is one of the greatest achievements of theoretical physics in the second half of the twentieth century. It's discovery was made possible by the most ambitious scientific experiment ever conducted. It is a shame that the highest achievements of science and reason are tainted by association with ancient superstition by calling the Higgs boson the 'God particle'.