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CONFUSED BY ALL this talk about the Higgs boson? Yeah, us too.
We here at TheJournal.ie HQ have spent a good chunk of today watching the increasingly bizarre attempts by news outlets trying to explain exactly what this so-called ‘god particle’ is.
And at the end of it all, we realised that even after Bryan Dobson’s best efforts to explain it on the Six-One News earlier, we’re still not quite sure (sorry Dobbo. It’s not you, it’s us).
So we’ve put together the five best videos we could find to help explain exactly what this Higgs boson is and why we should care.
Pay close attention. We’re going to test you on this at the end*
1. Of all the Higgs boson explainers, this Large Hadron Rap is possibly our favourite.
Made by some of the scientists in CERN, it’s got an early ’90s beat in the background, self-aware physicists mocking their own lack of cool, and it’s possibly the only rap ever to include the word ‘anti-particle’. What’s not to love?
2. The rather lovely Professor Brian Cox gave this TED talk where he discussed CERN (the biggest scientific experiment ever attempted). It’s a short but accessible explainer.
Skip to about 7.15 in the video if you want to see him explain how scientists explained what the Higgs boson was to Margaret Thatcher:
3. Scientist Don Lincoln, who works under the US Department of Energy, uses his chubby friend Eddie, swimming pools and a barracuda to explain what the Higgs boson is.
Watch this one if you only have 3 1/2 minutes:
4. “Maybe a few thousand years down the line we’ll find some way of using the Higgs field but not in the immediate future” - Dr. Malcolm Fairbairn from King’s College in London does a good (and quick!) job of explaining why discovering the Higgs boson wouldn’t mean a big change in our every day lives but would be an important step for scientific discovery.
5. To be honest, this video from CERN’s official YouTube channel is about more stuff than just the Higgs boson but it’s so er, amazing that we had to include it.
It looks like a 1980s game show with its cheap set and hilarious graphics – but imagine Going for Gold or Blockbusters if they had been played by particle physicists. It’s THAT good:
*Kidding.
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The husband did his very best and ut must have been awful seeing his wife deteriorate but the hosputal unable to cope. Appalling.
Makes me mad that hospital excellence isn’t the prior government priority.
The only priority of this government is to try and fool us all in a couple of years and get back into power
The Government is destroying the public health care system or letting it self destruct. They want the health care for profit. The people should be under no illusion that this will mean even less care for more money. Look at what privation has done to the system in the Netherlands. …..it destroyed it, the country went from one of the most humane efficient systems to one where people are paying enormous sums to private companies for the least cover required by law.
“Dr Peter Boylan says it’s well recognised that Ireland has the lowest number of consultants per head of population in the OECD”. I’d hazard a guess earnings are at the very top levels of the OECD. Pay less, employ more?
Shock horror. Yup, top 2/3 well paid in the OECD even after recent cuts, and twice the pay of uk equivalents. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/irish-hospital-consultants-among-highest-paid-in-the-world-1.1850847
Hospitals are on five day week. Go in Friday wait till Monday for attention.
Consultant salaries have already been cut drastically. The result? There’s a mass shortage as consultants emigrate to North America and Australia for far better pay and conditions.
Not a very smart comment about reducing pay when they can’t recruit consultants (or registrars) to work in these jobs in the first place.
If we could only have centres of fully resourced barely adequate competence instead of centres of excellence that would be a good start. Clearly much more could have been done if the resources were there but we have other priorities in Ireland.
She died because she was in the wrong place from day one, a regional hospital without the expertise, in form of consultants, to recognise and treat her condition effectively before it became irreversible. Shocking.
No, it’s a consequence of hundreds of years of religious oppression and lack of a proper, full abortion legislation.
Daniel with a comment like that you must be trolling
This tragic case had nothing to do with abortion.
You knob.wrong case
Pro-choice think has reached a new high.
And around and around and around we go.! We know whats wrong but we do not know how to fix it. And women die and will continue to die,,,,,,
And men Mary, lack of resources etc is not gender specific.
Bad nursing and medical oversight has more to do with it. This new excuse, which may be valid, seems however to be designed to protect the staff on duty in the ward at the time of the lady’s fatal illness and excuse the HSE management.
That nurse tried her best to say patient needed icu but doctors dont care bout nurses opinions
Not to worry, thaw case will probably be used as an excuse to move maternity services out of Sligo hospital now to Galway or Derry or the moon.
Sad but true Carina.
I think using this case to make a point for more consultants is insensitive in the extreme. Our doctors are highly trained and should have been able to make the calls here. It shouldn’t have needed a consultant (who decided to go off to a clinic…).
A better call would be for the consultants to work in line with a 24x7x365 health service rather than suiting themselves to short days, long weekends and private appointments using public infrastructure. The outcome of those changes would not be ‘debatable’.
Lemon,
It’s strange that you think a consultant who is rostered to work in a clinic outside the hospital is in some way ‘suiting himself’
There aren’t enough consultants to staff a 24/7 roster.
There aren’t enough registrars, or SHOs, or interns either for that matter.
All doctors in ireland work far and away in excess of our contracted hours, in underresourced services stretched too thinly to provide the level of care we would like.
Nonsense about people suiting themselves (who exactly would have covered that clinic?) is unhelpful, and that antagonistic attitude is a big part of why the shortage of medical manpower exists.
Corrigan you dope!
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