The Higgs Boson -- Found on eBay!

And now here's a light-hearted beginning to the blogging week. Someone should have told those scientists who switched on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland last week. This gigantic machine, the world's biggest physics experiment, is looking for the Higgs boson, a tiny sub-atomic particle that has been eluding physicists for decades. Well, they didn't have to spend billions of dollars and years of their time to build this behemoth -- they could have looked for it on eBay, where you can find great deals even at the sub-atomic level.

I found not one, but two listings for the Higgs boson, including one that boasts super-fast shipping, promising to ship the item "directly at light speed from Switzerland." The other seller, perhaps thinking of those people who felt that the LHC could have resulted in the creation of mini black holes, warns that "packing also presents problems as there is the possibility that the package may disappear into the particle itself." (Always a good idea to set buyer expectations).

eBay sellers, displaying their usual enterprise, seized on the occasion to list several Large Hadron collider-themed items, ranging from a miniature oil portrait of the Hadron Collider with a pancake on its head to the obligatory "I survived the Large Hadron Collider" t-shirt.

Jokes aside, if last week's news has sparked (or rekindled) your interest in science, look no further than eBay for smart deals on understanding our universe. I wholeheartedly recommend two excellent books by Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, and pretty much anything written by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

OK, it's not as much fun as smashing atoms against each other after racing them at near light speeds inside a vast 17 mile underground doughnut, but it's a start.