Debate has erupted in scientific circles following the awarding of the Nobel Prize to particle physics pioneers Peter Higgs and Francois Englert. Celebrations were short-lived, as quantum physicists reminded the committee that observing any entity has an effect on it: as Peter Higgs hadn’t turned up to the ceremony, no one could be certain whether he accepted the prize or not. Indeed no one could really be certain if he still existed, or had ever existed at all.
Professor Higgs proposed the ‘God particle’ in a theoretical paper written in the 1960s, just before Professor Englert postulated a similar particle. Thanks to Higgs, the particle is now known as the Higgs Boson, rather than the Englert Boson, or the Kibble-Brout-Cern-Royal Swedish Academy Boson.
The Higgs Boson gives everything in the universe its mass, and has lately attracted the attention of dieters. Joachim Dunstable of ‘Lose Weight: Fast’, is advertising a new program that promises dieters they can annihilate 8 trillion Higgs Bosons in under two weeks.
Meanwhile, Al Gore has stated that he invented the Higgs Boson, claiming that no one with any certainty can prove otherwise.
The Higgs Boson was unavailable for comment.