This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
First things first: There is a movement afoot of sorts within certain sectors of the high-energy physics community to rename the Higgs boson to better reflect all those who contributed to its theoretical development and eventual discovery. Sure, it's named after Peter Higgs, and has been called that for decades in the academic literature and beyond, but now there might be Nobel prizes at stake. So we should totes start training people to call it something else now -- because that approach worked so well for getting people to stop calling it the "God Particle."
Physics Buzz cheekily suggested replacing it with a strange abstract symbol and referring to it as "The Particle Formerly Known as Higgs" (think pop star Prince, children of the Nineties). I'm with the Guardian's Jon Butterworth on this one: "a dispute about the name is an embarrassing sideshow."
CERN has observed matter-antimatter asymmetry in the decays of a fourth subatomic particle. Sean Carroll, (a.k.a. the Time Lord) took issue with the media coverage -- et tu, Symmetry Breaking? Per Sean, there's a crucial nuance that is often missed: "The logic is as irresistible as it is faulty: the process of baryogenesis, by which matter came to dominate over antimatter, requires that there be CP violation in the early universe; we are studying CP violation here in the late universe; obviously, what we’re doing helps us understand the matter/antimatter asymmetry. But that’s only true if the kind of CP violation we are studying is actually somehow related to baryogenesis. Which, most experts believe, it is not."
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