Gettin' Higgy With it: A Roundup of Higgs Boson Jokes on Twitter

On the day we reserve to tell ourselves America is great - July 4 - Europe reminds us that we suck at science. #HiggsBoson

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) July 4, 2012

Big science news today: Scientists at Europe's CERN research center have discovered a new subatomic particle believed to be a basic building block of the universe, which appears to be the "boson" imagined and named half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs. And Stephen Hawking loses a $100 bet. Many of us on Twitter know that we should be excited by all of this, but have no idea what it really means, having dope-smoked our way through Physics class in high school. This animation helps. Still: If you can't join 'em, LOL at 'em. Here are some of the better #higgsjokes I faved on Twitter after the news broke. Did I miss any good ones? Let me know in the comments. And read Maggie's post.

Whoa whoa whoa! We’re cross-breeding hogs and bison now? Thanks a lot Obamacare!

— ed casey (@edcasey) July 4, 2012

Update from CERN:It turns out the thing they found in the Large Haldron Collider was just a GIF.

— Dave Pell (@davepell) July 4, 2012

The #Higgs #Boson walks into a catholic church. Priest says "What are you doing here?" HB says "You can't have mass without me" #higgsjokes

— Kallee (@Kallee) July 4, 2012

"Are You There God Particle? It's Me, Average Person That Doesn't Understand You"

— Steve Murray (@NPsteve) July 4, 2012

Where is your god now, particles?

— Daniel Werneck (@empire_of_dust) July 4, 2012

Overheard on the newsdesk: "I don't care what the Higgs boson headline is, just make sure we spell Hadron correctly."

— Guardian style guide (@guardianstyle) July 4, 2012

I've got 99.9999% problems, but a Higgs ain't one.

— Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) July 4, 2012

I hope Higgs-Boson isn't an Old Testament God particle.

— John Moe (@johnmoe) July 4, 2012

Higgs Boson Explainer: It's like, a particle, man.

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) July 4, 2012

Turned down opportunity to go on 1-hour radio programme to discuss the religious significance of the Higgs particle since there isn't any.

— Marcus Chown (@marcuschown) July 4, 2012

The Higgs discovery makes me feel heavier already. What we need instead is the anti-Higgs. A particle that takes mass away.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) July 4, 2012

Yup. HIggs boson. Right where I left it.

— Adam Rogers (@jetjocko) July 2, 2012

If I discovered the Higgs boson, I'd also do my presentation in ComicSans just to watch the outrage on Twitter ;-)

— Bora Zivkovic (@BoraZ) July 4, 2012

Ricky Gervais collapses after yelling at 2 strangers discussing the God particle.

— Andy Kindler (@AndyKindler) July 4, 2012

There's an easy-to-understand video online that explains Higgs boson & creation of the universe, but it's like four minutes long.Pass.

— Mike Scully (@scullymike) July 4, 2012

Why didn't they let Danny Glover announce the "Higgs" part of the whole Higgs boson thing? #toooldforthissigma

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) July 4, 2012

Can't believe they've already lost the Higgs Boson.

— Peter Serafinowicz (@serafinowicz) July 4, 2012

The Higgs boston is the theoretical particle that accounts for heaviness of accents.

— John Rennie (@tvjrennie) July 4, 2012

A Higgs boson walks into a bar. The barman doesn't understand.

— Ed Yong(@edyong209) July 4, 2012

An FTL neutrino walks into a bar. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... A confused Higgs Boson walks into a bar.

— Martin Robbins (@mjrobbins) July 4, 2012

A neutrino goes into a bar. "What would you.." says the barman, but the neutrino is already thousands of miles away.

— Martin Robbins (@mjrobbins) July 4, 2012

A Higgs Boson walks into a bar. "Want a drink?" asks the barman. The Higgs Boson doesn't reply. Because it's a Higgs Boson. Not a person.

— Martin Robbins (@mjrobbins) July 4, 2012

Discovery of Higgs boson a blow to Bravo's upcoming reality show America's Next Top Standard Model.

— Adam Rogers (@jetjocko) July 4, 2012

Hey I wrote this awesome post and... No, no its not about the Higgs but you... Wait, where are you going? Hey, come back.

— Ed Yong(@edyong209) July 4, 2012

• [My]

  Search 
  https://twitter.com/#!/afrakt for Higgs. You’ll find a bunch more.

• [darrrrrrn]

  Lucky we found the ‪#Higgs‬ or else we’d have collided all those hard-ons together for nothing.

  https://twitter.com/darren_cullen/status/220590957907816448

  • [doug rogers]

    I believe you’re talking about the Higgs Bosom, no?

    • [Red Pill Junkie]

       Man, the Higgs Bosom was so hard to find, they shoulda call it the Higgs Clitoris!

      Aaaand that is why I’m going to die alone…

      • [doug rogers]

        ba-dump!

• [markjamesmurphy]

   https://twitter.com/markjamesmurphy/status/220267157970362369

• [shutz]

  “Did you hear?  They found the Higgs Boson!”
  “Heavy.”

• [nox]

  Ironically the US was at the forefront of this 20 years ago, but then they started failing at science.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider 

  • [Cowicide]

    I hate irony like that, but I love the fact that you’re focusing on that instead of attacking the messenger (Tyson) like so many embarrassing Americans are doing right now in “response” to his tweet.

• [Andrew S.]

  Team operating the LHC – 1  Team operating the Super Monkey Collider – 0. 

• [BDiamond]

  The Large Hadron Collider actually opened a window into a parallel universe, in which Magnum, P.I. was real instead of a TV show. (Stay with me on this.) In that universe, Jonathan Higgins actually served in the British Royal Navy instead of the Royal Air Force. While in the Royal Navy, Jonathan served as the foreman of a deck crew. In essence, the Hadron Collider discovered … the Bosun Higgins.

  • [Nathan Cocks]

    Far and away the best Higgs-Boson joke yet. My hat is off to you good person.

  • [Jake0748]

     groan…

• [Michael Schulder]

  I now believe the God particle is inside of me. @schuldercnn Or there’s the one about the physicist searching for Higgs at night under a lamp post here – http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/19/searching-for-news-that-matters/

• [Olav Cleemann]

  So.. If I cant find my keys, I just need a Hadron colider?
  Somebody must have had a Higgsup!
  How do you play a Higgs boson – like a tuba?
  What do you think of Higgs boson? – Nothing in particular!

• [Albert]

  This one was my favorite

  At the end of the ‪#higgs‬ announcement, one of the CERN team will pause, nonchalantly say “oh, one more thing”, then calmly teleport away.

  https://twitter.com/tomscott/status/220429625816383489

• [AnthonyC]

  Slightly off topic: Why is boson in quotes? If anything, “discovered” should be in quotes ;)

• [Noodlehead]

  Actually, what they meant to say is that they found the freakin’ bassoon Higg’s lost that one time…  at band camp.  

• [Richard Dagenais]

  Newsflash: Apple sues CERN. “We patented Higgs Boson already.”

• [Adam Fields]

  “The LHC team will also be announcing yesterday that they’ve discovered tachyons.”
  https://twitter.com/fields/status/220205489173176320

• [Bill Higgins– Beam Jockey]

  @neiltyson  On the day we reserve to tell ourselves America is great – July 4 – Europe reminds us that we suck at science.

  For values of “Europe” that include “$455 million invested in the CMS detector by the United States and over 500 collaborating scientists from the U.S.”

  • [Cowicide]

    Sigh…  [clap, clap, clap, clap]

    Congrats… you’re that guy here on Boing Boing of all places…

    I just read your post right after I already made mine below, care to read?

    by the United States and over 500 collaborating scientists from the U.S.”

    Yes, but how many of those scientists were born and educated outside of the USA?

    U.S. based research institutions are becoming less and less populated with their own citizens because of our shitty educational system. So while we can certainly beat our chests about it, we SHOULDN’T.

    FACT: Foreign-born and educated researchers are now disproportionately influential in US science.
    FACT: More than half of the PhD students in the United States’ physical sciences are from outside the US.
    FACT: Over 64% of the “USA’s” most-cited authors & 56% of the citation classics are from foreign-born researchers.

    • [Bill Higgins– Beam Jockey]

      Cowicide,  the state of U.S. science may be debated by reasonable people mustering reasonable evidence. 

      Nevertheless, I contend that given the very large involvement of U.S. scientists in the LHC’s experiments, the Higgs announcement is remarkably poor evidence “that we suck at science.”

      (I cannot resist adding….
      FACT: every one of those 455 million dollars was born in the United States.)

      • [Cowicide]

        FACT: every one of those 455 million dollars was born in the United States.

        MUCH MORE SOBERING FACT: The LHC was 7.5 billion euros.

        455 million U.S. dollars ain’t shit compared, buddy.

• [Cowicide]

  On the day we reserve to tell ourselves America is great – July 4 – Europe reminds us that we suck at science. #HiggsBoson

  Some dimwits on reddit hyperventilated upon reading Tyson’s tweet and proceeded to espouse the wonders of American scientific progress and how wrong, wrong, wrong Tyson was to tweet something so wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Oh, the irony of watching people trying to show how smart Americans are while doing so in ignorance… So I tried, tried, tried to show them the context:

  http://io9.com/5878503/watch-neil-degrasse-tyson-lay-bare-the-decline-of-american-science-in-180-seconds

  That shows in graphic detail how Tyson is right, right, right.

  It’s an amazing bit of gymnastics for some Americans to be able to beat their chests while simultaneously shoving their heads in the sand.  No wonder we’re getting further and further behind.

  Is it really patriotic to ignore American problems and do NOTHING about it?  NOPE, it’s not.

• [autark]

  sorry, no joke here, but the part of that animation where he said that they need more and more energy to keep discovering new particles just makes me think that we’ll never find the fundamental particle until we eventually use all the available energy in the universe, creating another big bang and starting the whole thing all over again.

  • [awjt]

    No, I think with the Higgs announcement, we’re close to seeing some of the *why* of particle-particle interactions.  With the standard model as a good launching point, we can start to see why some particles pick up different amounts of mass from the Higgs field, and others different amounts.  There’s something about those particles, or there are as yet unseen intercessors that mediate the products.  It’s all very interesting.

• [Elisa Gabbert]

  I like mine better: “I’ll believe they found the Higgs Boson when I see it.”

• [Rob Cottingham]

  Late to the party on this thread, but this was my July 4 cartoon: http://www.robcottingham.ca/cartoon/archive/do-you-still-want-to-see-this-odd-particle-ive-found/

• [mmrtnt]

  Here’s my contribution to particle physics