In addition to the Higgs, bosons include the photon, the gluon, the W and Z bosons, and the yet-to-be-discovered, graviton. "That's why electrons, which have a negative charge, can have anti-matter counterparts called positrons which carry a positive charge." "Really fermions are the things where we have this idea of a particle and anti-particle pair," says Taylor, "anti-particles at the fundamental level are fermions with the opposite charge." Only fermions, which are subdivided into quarks and leptons, have anti-particles, says Taylor. There are two types of particles in the Standard Model: fermions, the matter particles, and bosons, the force carriers. "At the elemental particle level bosons do not have anti-particles." If it is the Higgs it will not have an anti-particle, says Taylor. Scientists are almost certain it's the elusive Higgs boson, a particle that gives all other particles their mass through the Higgs field. "Now physicists need to understand exactly what it is that they've got," says Professor Geoff Taylor from the University of Melbourne and part of the physics team working with the Atlas Detector on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research. That's how good Boson X is, and why you should pick it up as soon as you can.The recent discovery of a new particle has been described by many scientists as the most important development in particle physics in the last century. That would be terrible, because this is a brilliant, twitchy arcade masterpiece that pulsates with originality and heart.īleary eyed at half past one I take what I swear will be one final shot at the run, all of my recent attempts having ended in minuscule percentages and early deaths. With the endless-running genre ploughing an ever-deepening furrow of mediocrity, Boson X could well be ignored. Watching the levels build themselves around you can be mesmerising, and requires swift reactions as you hurl your scientist towards a point where seconds before there was only empty space. You'll crash into walls with a burst of expletives one minute, only to dart through a tricky section and grab the energy you need to progress soon after. The game is both tense and breathtaking at the same time. Holding down your fingers for longer extends your jumps, sending you soaring through the air as the level warps and creates itself underneath you. Tapping on the left of the screen jumps you left, tapping the right sends you right, and tapping both jumps you forward. Unlocking particles unlocks new levels with different constraints, tougher set-ups, and their own unique styles. Get enough energy and you unlock the particle you're looking for. You play a professor wearing a tweed jacket who's sprinting down the inside of a particle accelerator, leaping from platform to platform to snag energy. Boson me aroundīoson X is an endless-runner that's tangentially about science. It's a new high score, the game tells me. There's a poof of pixels and my run ends. And then I get hit by a bolt of lightning. It's a handful of seconds away, easily within reach. I leap across a gap, darting left to land on a disappearing platform, then double-press to punch-it across the next gap.Īhead of me a blue block, an energy tile, slides into place. I only need to touch another energy tile and I'll have unlocked this particle. There's a brief moment when I glance up at the energy counter in the top corner of the screen and my palms start to sweat.
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