Yes, I already have my fantasy Nobel team picked, and as you can imagine, Peter Higgs is tapped as my Don Quixote of Physics, jousting at bosons that could end my roller-coaster life of binge eating and purge dieting just by making my mass disappear. Yeah, Peter! You go guy!
Dr. Higgs has postulated the existence of the Higgs boson, conveniently named after him, a particle that not only explains how the Universe came into being, but also extends an olive branch between string theory and Standard Model particle physicists, long locked in a vicious struggle for dominance of high energy physics. Hey, maybe Higgs will win the Peace Prize too! (Here's Peter in his Edinburgh office, explaining how it's impossible to stay upright after drinking too much single malt).
The problem with Petey winning the Karolinska saucer is the fact that no one has found his boson yet. The Large Hadron Collider was supposed to do just that, but with liquid helium spills and vacuum leaks, it sounds more like my apartment after the Oscars. There is some evidence of the Higgs B, but it's not conclusive and the Nobel committee has a notorious reputation for having something called "a verified, proven result." Well, if they can't see fit to hang the dish around Dr. Pete's neck, then I swear I won't touch a little meatball for a year and I'll protest in front of the nearest IKEA, at least until I see a table that would just make the breakfast nook.
Stay tuned, Nobel nerds. This Prize fight has all the marks of a heavyweight bout, beginning October 5th with Medicine and finishing October 12th with Economics. And if you're still on speaking terms with your bookie, lay a couple of bucks on Higgs - he may be a long shot, but so was Milton Friedman.
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