Rock stars of physics, particle business
smash matter, anti-matter and witness quarks, bottom to top
they don't stop
"Where the Higgs at?" Yo that's their mark!
Go! Go! Go!
Is this another music video explaining how the Large Hadron Collider at CERN operates? Nope, this time the beats bump and rhymes resonate to pay tribute to the original big-time atom smasher: the Tevatron.
Wired magazine Nerdcore Hip Hop All-Star funky49 releases today the first music video about Fermilab and its star particle accelerator. Rather than just focusing on how the mammoth machine works, science communicator funky49 looks at how the Tevatron fits into the "big picture": politics, national prominence and your pocketbook.
funky 49 films a rap video in front of the CDF detector at Fermilab.
Although the Tevatron got dethroned this year as the world's highest-energy particle accelerator, a title it held for more than two decades, it remains the world's highest-energy proton-antiproton collider. The Tevatron also remains firmly in the race against the LHC in Switzerland to find the Higgs boson, a.k.a. the God Particle.
And you can't have a good East Coast-West Coast competition without rap theme songs, according to a press release by funky49:
Standing on the shoulders of a giant, CERN's Large Hadron Rap with its near 5.7 million Youtube views, Fermilab battles back with its own rap song complete with music video!
"Particle Business" highlights the quest to discover how the universe evolved and the David and Goliath-like competition of discovery between the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, CERN in Europe, and Fermilab, outside of Chicago, IL.
Their goal, the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle thought to give matter mass, theorized but as yet unable to be measured.
"Particle Business" combines a phat hip-hop beat with lyrics about particle physics, limits on science funding, the competitive-collaboration that exists in science research and urging people watch television like Mr. Wizard's World and Carl Sagan's Cosmos instead of the entertainment of MTV.
"Particle Business" debuted in August 2009 sans video as part of a lecture on the use of rap music to teach and celebrate science and technology. symmetry magazine broke down the meaning behind the lyrics in its December 2009 issue.
The "Particle Business" video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaG6umMkbxg. An mp3 and a sampled "Where the Higgs at" ring tone is available at http://funky49.com.