The Higgs Boson, News Sources, and You

Work on discovering the Higgs boson has led to things like nuclear power & weaponry, as well as medical PET scanning. It could potentially lead to things like interstellar travel or (more realistically) new sources of safe, renewable energy. The fact that scientists have Five Sigma (i.e. 99.999%) evidence that this particle exists is a Big Freakin’ Deal™.

So what do news outlets think about this? These links show you the home pages of 16 top news sites at about 9:15am CST on July 4. This is one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in history… but some sites don’t seem to think so.

• ABC News
• BBC News (best grade for an actual news syndicate)
• CBS News (this is by far the worst coverage I found)
• CNN (excellent coverage)
• Digg
• Fox News
• Google News (the best I found overall)
• Huffington Post (I get it’s a national holiday, but this is not good. There’s more if you scroll down, though.)
• LA Times
• MSNBC
• NY Times
• Reddit (included because they usually get things right)
• Reuters (excellent coverage)
• USA Today
• Washington Post (excellent coverage)
• Yahoo! (as I started this post, the main story was about Bieber throwing a tantrum)

For information on what exactly the Higgs boson is, first watch this video. Seriously, watch it.

Then read these. Some of the information will go over a lot of people’s heads, but it should give you at least a fundamental understanding why this is such a Big Freakin’ Deal™.