The Large Hadron Collider Rap, Yo

Last week, the reports about Hig­gs Boson, oth­er­wise called the God par­ti­cle, put CERN and the Large Hadron Col­lid­er back into the news, lead­ing some to ask: What exact­ly are Hig­gs and the Col­lid­er all about? We’re glad you asked. And what bet­ter way to answer that ques­tion than with a fly, lit­tle rap by Kate McAlpine (aka Alpinekat) and Will Bar­ras. You can find the full lyrics below the jump, and the parts about Hig­gs Boson right below…

The Hig­gs Boson – that’s the one that every­body talks about.
And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out
If the Hig­gs exists, they ought to see it right away
And if it doesn’t, then the sci­en­tists will final­ly say
“There is no Hig­gs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Some­thing in our Stan­dard Mod­el went awry.”

But the Hig­gs – I still haven’t said just what it does
They sup­pose that par­ti­cles have mass because
There is this Hig­gs field that extends through all space
And some par­ti­cles slow down while oth­er par­ti­cles race
Straight through like the pho­ton – it has no mass
But some­thing heavy like the top quark, it’s drag­gin’ its ***
And the Hig­gs is a boson that car­ries a force
And makes par­ti­cles take orders from the field that is its source.
They’ll detect it…

Twen­ty-sev­en kilo­me­ters of tun­nel under ground
Designed with mind to send pro­tons around
A cir­cle that cross­es through Switzer­land and France
Six­ty nations con­tribute to sci­en­tif­ic advance
Two beams of pro­tons swing round, through the ring they ride
‘Til in the hearts of the detec­tors, they’re made to col­lide
And all that ener­gy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, par­ti­cles cre­at­ed from the vac­u­um
And then…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at col­li­sions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re look­ing for what­ev­er new par­ti­cles they can find.
The LHC accel­er­ates the pro­tons and the lead
And the things that it dis­cov­ers will rock you in the head.

We see aster­oids and plan­ets, stars galore
We know a black hole resides at each galaxy’s core
But even all that mat­ter can­not explain
What holds all these stars togeth­er – some­thing else remains
This dark mat­ter inter­acts only through grav­i­ty
And how do you catch a par­ti­cle there’s no way to see
Take it back to the con­ser­va­tion of ener­gy
And the par­ti­cles appear, clear as can be

You see par­ti­cles fly­ing, in jets they spray
But you notice there ain’t noth­in’, goin’ the oth­er way
You say, “My law has just been vio­lat­ed – it don’t make sense!
There’s got­ta be anoth­er par­ti­cle to make this bal­ance.”
And it might be dark mat­ter, and for first
Time we catch a glimpse of what must fill most of the known ‘Verse.
Because…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at col­li­sions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re look­ing for what­ev­er new par­ti­cles they can find.

Anti­mat­ter is sort of like matter’s evil twin
Because except for charge and hand­ed­ness of spin
They’re the same for a par­ti­cle and its anti-self
But you can’t store an antipar­ti­cle on any shelf
Cuz when it meets its nor­mal twin, they both anni­hi­late
Mat­ter turns to ener­gy and then it dis­si­pates

When mat­ter is cre­at­ed from ener­gy
Which is exact­ly what they’ll do in the LHC
You get mat­ter and anti­mat­ter in equal parts
And they try to take that back to when the uni­verse starts
The Big Bang – back when the mat­ter all explod­ed
But the amount of anti­mat­ter was some­how erod­ed
Because when we look around we see that mat­ter abounds
But antimatter’s nowhere to be found.
That’s why…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at col­li­sions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re look­ing for what­ev­er new par­ti­cles they can find.
The LHC accel­er­ates the pro­tons and the lead
And the things that it dis­cov­ers will rock you in the head.

The Hig­gs Boson – that’s the one that every­body talks about.
And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out
If the Hig­gs exists, they ought to see it right away
And if it doesn’t, then the sci­en­tists will final­ly say
“There is no Hig­gs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Some­thing in our Stan­dard Mod­el went awry.”

But the Hig­gs – I still haven’t said just what it does
They sup­pose that par­ti­cles have mass because
There is this Hig­gs field that extends through all space
And some par­ti­cles slow down while oth­er par­ti­cles race
Straight through like the pho­ton – it has no mass
But some­thing heavy like the top quark, it’s drag­gin’ its ***
And the Hig­gs is a boson that car­ries a force
And makes par­ti­cles take orders from the field that is its source.
They’ll detect it….

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at col­li­sions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re look­ing for what­ev­er new par­ti­cles they can find.

Now some of you may think that grav­i­ty is strong
Cuz when you fall off your bicy­cle it don’t take long
Until you hit the earth, and you say, “Dang, that hurt!”
But if you think that force is pow­er­ful, you’re wrong.
You see, grav­i­ty – it’s weak­er than Weak
And the rea­son why is some­thing many sci­en­tists seek
They think about dimen­sions – we just live in three
But maybe there are some oth­ers that are too small to see
It’s into these dimen­sions that grav­i­ty extends
Which makes it seem weak­er, here on our end.
And these dimen­sions are “rolled up” – curled so tight
That they don’t affect you in your day to day life
But if you were as tiny as a gravi­ton
You could enter these dimen­sions and go wan­der­ing on
And they’d find you…

When LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at col­li­sions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re look­ing for what­ev­er new par­ti­cles they can find.
The LHC accel­er­ates the pro­tons and the lead
And the things that it dis­cov­ers will rock you in the head!