Higgs boson in fiction
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The Higgs boson has appeared in several works of fiction in popular culture. These references rarely reflect the expected properties of the hypothetical elementary particle, or do so only vaguely, and often imbue it with fantastic properties.
- In the sci-fi comedy series Lexx, one character points out that although all-out nuclear war sometimes destroys all life on planets as advanced as Earth, it is much more common for such planets to be obliterated by physicists attempting to determine the precise mass of the Higgs boson particle, since the moment the mass is known the planet will instantly be compressed to the size of a pea.
- In Stanisław Lem's Solaris, a space station crew deals with an inexplicable presence of other people, including absent or deceased friends and relatives — apparently the creations of an alien phenomenon they are studying. They discover that their visitors, when killed, always return to life, even if they attempt to kill themselves. In Steven Soderbergh's 2002 film adaptation, the script has a reference to Higgs bosons, absent in the original: "So, if we created a negative Higgs field, and bombarded them with a stream of Higgs anti-bosons, they might disintegrate."
- In Brian Aldiss's White Mars an expedition is established to go to Mars to find Higgs bosons which is believed to hold the key in solving the question of where mass comes from. The reason that Mars is considered is because Earth and the Moon are "too noisy" from all the human activity for the experiment. The way they go about is by having a ring with superconductive fluid, Argon 36, and waiting till they see an error which will signify a Higgs particle has passed through the fluid.
- In Robert J. Sawyer's Flashforward an experiment at CERN to find Higgs particle causes the consciousness of the entire human race to be sent twenty years into the future.
- In John Ringo's Into the Looking Glass the University of Central Florida is destroyed by a 60 kiloton explosion that is first thought to be a nuclear weapon, but turns out to be a mishap with a Higgs Boson. This also leads to gateways to to other worlds and a war with the aliens on the other side of the gates.
- In Richard Cox's The God Particle American business man Steve Keeley is defenestrated three stories, but wakes up and begins to see the world in a different way--he is able to accurately predict future events, read others' thoughts, and manipulate his environment.
