The 48-year search for the “God particle”

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Today: Slow creativity, the math powering neural networks, and a sleep tip
By Harris Sockel

Peter Higgs, the British physicist and Nobel laureate who predicted the existence of a “God particle” that gives everything in the universe its shape, died last week.

Thankfully, on Medium, I found a few posts that break down exactly what the “God particle” is for non-subatomic physicists like me. Anton Selin explains in simple terms: We don’t know why particles in the universe have weight. Higgs solved that mystery by proposing the existence of a very generous, helpful particle whose only (godlike?) purpose is to give other particles mass.

He called it the Higgs boson. What is a “boson”? A term for a class of subatomic particles, named after legendary polymath Satyendra Nath Bose.

(There’s a bit more to the story, but those are the basics. The term “God particle” arrived in the ’90s, based on a book about the concept written by another physicist. Higgs, an atheist, wasn’t a fan of the term.)

Higgs proposed the concept in 1964. For 48 years — over half his life — it was just a theory. Scientists worldwide scrambled to verify it. And then, in 2012, a team of physicists in Geneva finally identified a particle that matched Higgs’ description. They verified our entire understanding of particle physics in the process.

What else we’re reading

• Most social apps are designed to encourage frequent posting. But who benefits from that? “Post less, write more,” advises Isra A. in an ode to slow, deliberate creativity.
• Data scientist Cristian Leo gives us an introductory course to the math behind AI chatbots. Every “neuron” in an AI neural network is essentially a weighted sum of incoming data, multiplied by a bias factor. During training, biases and weights change continuously so the network gets better at its job.

From the archive: the secret history of umbrellas

A few facts about umbrellas you may not have known: They were first used in Ancient Egypt to protect nobility from the sun. And, in the 18th century, people wore umbrellas attached to lighting rods as hats — to stay safe in a storm. Here’s Tom Mitchell with more umbrella facts you never knew you never knew. It’s April, after all, the rainiest month on the East Coast.

😴 Your daily dose of practical wisdom (about sleep)

To help yourself ease into sleep, try a DIY “turn-down service.” “Around 7pm each night, I close the curtains in the bedroom, remove the decorative pillows from the bed, and pull back the covers,” explains John Zeratsky.

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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb, Jon Gluck, and Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com