God: Great Job On Finding My Particle!
God, the author of The Last Testament: A Memoir, took some time off from helping Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin to thank the scientists for finding that missing particle—who would’ve thought to look in the particle collider!
Michael Cogliantry; CERN / AP Photo
First off, they’re all My particles, OK? I made every last one of them, from the hunky handsome proton to the waifish, Starbucks-named neutrino. So when you attach My name only to the Higgs boson you insult the decillions of quarks, leptons, gluons, and all the other “little particles” without whose hard work and collaborative spirit the universe would cease to exist, at least with the same brio.
Secondly, congratulations! You did a heck of a job. First and foremost, kudos to Professor Higgs himself, the man who decades ago predicted the existence of a mass-bestowing particle. As you may know he is an avowed atheist, so I thought it was rather kind of Me to let him revel in his earthly success before sending him off to spend eternity as the anguished m in a fiery E=mc2 conversion sequence.
In truth I’m not that surprised you guys found it—sorry, “guys and girls.” Old Testament habits die hard! Humanity has always had a talent for having dogged faith in, then interpreting squiggly lines on paper as proving the existence of, entities that are impossible to see. (No one appreciates that more than Me.)
What does surprise me is how much attention the whole thing got. I never thought I’d see the day when “CERN” trended on Twitter. It must have been extremely gratifying for the research team to see the name of their laboratory make the same prestigious list as #NorwayLovesBieber and #replace70ssongtitleswithpoop. To be honest I can’t remember the last time a physics breakthrough got this kind of international media attention. Kidding! Of course I do; I’m God. It was August 6, 1945, and it killed.
But the larger point is: I’m still God. Your discovery doesn’t threaten Me. Unlike the CERN researchers I do not “sweat the small stuff”. I see the big picture, which is that no matter how much insight and control you gain over matter, you will never control time. You can’t see what’s coming; only I can. That’s why I win.
Besides, even when it comes to the material world you haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the absolutely crazy shit I threw into quantum physics. For example, in about five years or so you’re going to smash together a quark and an antiquark and discover a new particle that actually folds out into a bed.
It’s called a futon.
Zing! Like I said, never saw it coming.
