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In the Event That You Have Accidentally Swallowed the Higgs Boson

By bcohen on April 9, 2009.

"Do you feel protons decaying? Grand Unification may be occurring near your vital organs."

Michael Rottman at The Morning News brings an important public service announcement to the web. By all means, please be encouraged to read it.

If pressed for time, note some of the highlights of the ten steps of concrete advice:

1. Do not panic. Resist the urge to induce vomiting. If the Higgs boson gets stuck in your teeth, they could turn into pure light.

2. If space and time have inverted within your body, skip to step 10.

...

9. If all else fails, the only foolproof way to remove the Higgs boson from your innards is to disprove its existence. This assumes you are able to manipulate your limbs well enough to write a paper. If your hands have grown to the size of large cities, it is acceptable to find a jealous scientist to disprove it for you. Believe me, there will be many to choose from. Do not cheat by purchasing a pre-written paper disproving the Higgs boson. These are poorly researched and grammatically offensive, and most were written by the telekinetic sea sponge.

Incidentally, I don't know what a Higgs Boson is and I refuse to look it up. But it sounds small.

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Humor stuff, and in the best of worlds, science humor stuff
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I'm not a physicist, and I've never ran around long Alpine tunnels, so take this for what it's worth. But the Higgs boson seems to be vital for proving the existence of a fifth fundamental force that causes objects to be attracted to the backs and insides of sofas. This explains why it is so hard to find.

Another silly question: does the decay of the Higgs boson release enough energy that you would get a measurably increased risk of cancer if one decays inside your body?