Special

Yesterday physicists announced that they have found the elusive Higgs Particle.  I am neither a science geek, nor had I ever heard about the Higgs Particle before I read about it in the paper this morning.  But really, how fucking cool is this:

"Confirmation of the Higgs boson or something very much like it would constitute a rendezvous with destiny for a generation of physicists who have believed in the boson for half a century without ever seeing it.  The finding affirms a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws – but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry." -NYTimes writer Denis Overbye

I love this so much.

I love the faith - that they knew it was there and kept on looking for proof.

And I LOVE the implications- I love the idea that the universe is ordered and simple and elegant, but that "special", variety, life itself, manifests through this tiny tiny little particle that attaches itself to "elementary forms of matter" giving them a coating of heft and difference, and nibbles little bits out of the walls of symmetry.

This is of course the way I read this; I'm likely getting it wrong, but the idea blossomed in my mind as a validation- it describes what often fascinates me- the absolute minutiae that separates people and things, the things that make us special.