“Where the Higgs At?” – Fermilab Rap Spins Some Serious Particle Beats

Inspired by Kate McAlpine’s 2008 YouTube rap sensation about the CERN Large Hadron Collider, physicist and music aficionado Dr. Ben Kilminster of Fermilab felt as though America’s homegrown particle accelerator, The Tevatron located in Batavia, Illinois, deserved a lyrical tribute of its own.

Kilminster contacted funky49, an artist whose previous hip-hop experimentation included both forays into science fiction and a science outreach project for his native Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry, about pinning such studious rhymes. With the help of filmmaker Dan Lamoureux, director of the Nerdcore For Life documentary, they filmed a music video for the song “Particle Business” during planned maintenance of the Fermilab particle collider. Therein the largest high-energy particle physics facility in the United States receives adequate props. As does the long-sought Higgs boson particle.

Digs at the LHC are kept to a minimum, but could a US/European physics rap battle be far behind?

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