 Paul Prudhomme discovered inside Large Hadron Collider
(Geneva, Switzerland) Maintenance workers
dismantling a portion of the recently completed European particle accelerator
in Switzerland were surprised to discover husky celebrity chef Paul
Prudhomme wedged inside the machine's cylindrical barrel. The unexpected
finding has led some scientists to argue that Mr. Prudhomme, a specialist
in Cajun cuisine with a remarkable quality to add mass to all those around him, is actually a Higgs boson, the
long sought-after so-called “God
particle”.
If true, the Standard Model–which for
decades has attempted to quantitatively characterize interactions
between particles through the three
fundamental short range forces and their carriers–would finally be
complete.
“We expected the mysterious Higgs boson to be a
massive particle, certainly, but we had no idea of some of it's other remarkable qualities," physicist Daniel Corsi explained. "Like its propensity for creating such deliciously succulent blackened redfish,”
At
first scientists mis-identified the newly discovered massive particle
as comic actor Dom DeLuise–also a bearded, balding, rotundite man
with affinities for white newsboy caps, sausage and sitting. But the
confusion quickly evaporated after a determination of
magnetic moment revealed Mr. Prudhomme to be spin 0,
consistent with the Higgs boson, while Mr. DeLuise was thought to be spin 1/2.
As an unfortunate consequence of the spin test, which required passage through a Stern-Gerlach device, Mr. Prudhomme
was left under a "woozy spell" and immediately returned home to
Louisiana to lie down. (Mr DeLuise's spin was estimated through examination of old footage from the hilarious 1984 Burt Reynold's vehicle Cannonball Run II.)
A few rogue theoretical
physicists offered up the possibility that the Prudhomme-DeLuise confusion might actually point to an oscillation between two different
states of the same particle. Most in the High Energy Physics community, however, have dismissed
this hypothesis based on the fact that Mr. DeLuise,
while being an avid food aficionado and occasional creator of fine
cuisine, is not an actual professional chef, thus violating symmetry
constraints necessary for the stability of such an oscillation.
Neither Mr. Prudhomme nor his
agent responded to repeated calls for comment though his publicist did
release a statement late yesterday saying the world famous chef was
“resting after a difficult ordeal and would like to ask that his
privacy be respected by members of the media as well as the scientific
community, but would appreciate someone bringing by a bucket of wings if it wasn't too much bother.”
In a telephone conversation from a hotel room in Tucson, where he is currently on a book-signing tour, Mr. DeLuise seemed somewhat confused when
asked whether he considered his vacuum expectation value to be
non-zero, responding that, while "good help was certainly hard to
find," he felt he currently "paid [his maid] Juanita well enough."
He then confessed an unexpected poultry craving and proceeded to
inquire if there were "any decent chicken joints in this town" or,
if not, how late room service was available.
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